By Dave Abrahams
Cape Town – Despite unseasonably threatening weather, more than 100 riders gathered at the Hells Angels clubhouse in Brooklyn on Saturday morning, 21 November for the annual Poppy Day run.
And as many again joined in at the end venue, the Fort Ikapa military base in Goodwood.
The run, named for the blood-red flowers that bloomed in the churned up fields of Flanders in Belgium after the second Battle of the Somme in the spring of 1916, commemorates the end of the First World War in November 1918, and honours the memory of those who fell in that great conflict and all the wars since then.
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Convened by the MOTH ex-servicemen’s motorcycle association, together with the Hells Angels Cape Town, the SA Legion and the Cape Town Rifles (Dukes), the event was a fundraiser for the Legion, the MOTH Ex-Serviceman’s Cottage Association and the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital.
With loud music, good food, plenty of cold beverages and all sorts of biker memorabilia on offer, it looked like any other biker rally, as volunteers from the various clubs grunted and puffed their way through the challenges of the Strong Man competition - with plenty of encouragement from their club-mates.
CLOSELY KNIT
All grew quiet, however, when the band of the Cape Town Rifles (Dukes) marched onto the field for the wreath-laying ceremony, followed by the haunting notes of Taps.
Biker clubs are closely-knit groups, because they know that riding motorcycles on roads dominated by big tin boxes will always be dangerous, and every mainstream rider knows what it’s like to lose a friend - which makes the Poppy Day Run all the more poignant, as it was for the families of the fallen servicemen and women also in attendance.
Perhaps it was simply because their sacrifice was not forgotten; for as long as they are remembered, their deaths will not have been in vain.
IOL