The field of poppies in the moat of the Tower of London has inspired five million people to visit so far. Everyone knows that each of the 888,246 ceramic poppies represents the death of a British or Commonwealth soldier who fought in the First World War. But who knows why the artwork, called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, became a phenomenon seen around the world?

I went to see for myself and every person I talked with had a different answer.

The conversations began when my Circle Line carriage emptied at Tower Hill. I inched my way out of the station toward a road junction where we had 33 seconds to cross over to the moat according to the LED display sign – all 3,000 of us.

Standing next to me was Karen Hodge, from Didcot, and her husband and mother. We couldn’t see the poppies yet but Karen knew she had to be there because her great-grandfather fought in the war.

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Her mother Angela took up the story: “As well as remembering all those who died we must not forget the equally huge numbers and more of those who fought and survived but whose lives were changed forever by the experience. Post-traumatic shock syndrome was not recognised in those times and shell shock, I believe, was considered a weakness.

“My husband’s great uncle went to the trenches as a young 20-year-old and came home white-haired like an old man and was a broken man his whole life.

“My grandfather – who was buried alive when the trench caved in on him, killing the comrade next to him – amazingly carried on fighting after that incident in 1915 and was sent home with shell shock only in May 1918. There is no doubt that the war affected how he was and who he was for the rest of his life.”

An art installation like this one can draw out of people very private reactions. Karen had never before heard from her mother the story of how her great-grandfather was buried alive in the war.

The poppies created a silent drama that screamed at the viewer, a violent scene that was, at the same time, peaceful. It was disturbing and soothing.

The artwork had the unanimous support of everyone I talked to – the young, the old and their children. Mothers with double prams jostled with zimmer frames and wheelchairs in a crowd five-people deep. Each one knew he or she was part of something bigger than all the individuals who came to see it.

Almost everyone had a camera. There seemed to be this intense desire to ‘own’ the view, the event, the happening.

What’s happening now, though? The flowers are going away and the poppies sent to the more than 888,000 people who bought them, raising £15m for six military charities. But not all the poppies are coming down.

David Cameron announced a last-minute stay of execution at the Tower of London. Two aspects of the art installation will be on display till the end of the month – the wave from this sea of blood-red blooms rising over a walkway to the Tower and the cascade of poppies flowing down from a turret into the moat. These two parts of the artwork will tour the country before being installed permanently at the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester.

Tom Piper grew up in Wytham and he is the RSC stage designer who created the installation from artist Paul Cummins’ ceramic poppies.

He is delighted: “I would be very honoured to have one piece at the Imperial War Museum North and one at the London site. They are about loss and remembrance and the fragility of human life, so the IWM seems a perfect place.”

This view was endorsed by retail manager Stephen Tree, from Croydon.

“Wherever the vast numbers of people came from or why they went, you couldn’t help but notice everyone’s quiet awe at the poppies,” he said. “What it proves to me is that a more permanent memorial as vibrant as that at the Tower is needed to capture the imaginations of younger generations while educating them on their history.”

Maybe this is what it is all about – ‘capturing the imagination’. Maybe we have all been waiting for this – a guide to the enormity of what had happened: the loss of people, the loss of hope. We stood there looking at the meandering line of poppies at a unique, pristine shoreline of this moat, “confronted with something commensurate to our capacity for wonder”.

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