BUYING BUDDY POPPIES A GREAT WAY TO SAY THANKS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

You just never know how people are going to react when they see Leland Auger standing outside the supermarket just before Veterans Day, selling the small paper flowers.

Some will do everything they can to avoid making eye contact with him as they quickly grab a shopping cart and walk inside.

Others will smile and stop at his folding table, telling Leland it's been years since they've seen the little paper flowers he is handing out.

They will reach into their purses and wallets, and hand the Korean War veteran a dollar or two for one of them. A few people, mainly seniors, will give him a $10 or $20, and tell him to keep the change.

They know where the money is going, know the story behind the Buddy Poppy. It's worth more than $20, they say. A lot more.

``It's the children walking up with their parents I enjoy the most,'' says Leland, a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 11508 in Chatsworth/Woodland Hills.

``They're attracted by the color and brightness of the flowers. They want to know what Buddy Poppies are, and why I'm standing there.''

So Leland looks at their parents to see if they have the time, and if they do, he tells the children about Canadian Army Lt. Col. John McCrae and the poem he wrote after World War I called ``In Flanders Fields.''

How it inspired a movement worldwide that has lived on through generations to remind people never to forget the men and women who died fighting for their countries.

``In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead, short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved and now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch, be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us, who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields.''

Since 1922, Leland tells the children, soldiers living in Veterans Administration hospitals across the country have been making these paper poppies as therapy to provide exercise for fingers and hands crippled by wounds, disease and the effects of old age.

Tells them how they also earn a few dollars tying them into bunches of 10 and packing them in boxes of 500, 1,000 or 2,000 for shipment to VFW posts so men like Leland can sell them to families like theirs.

The money he raised in four days standing in front of this supermarket - $800 - will go to the vets living in Building 99 at the Sepulveda VA in North Hills.

It will help them buy personal items the government doesn't supply, and it will buy them a few precious hours every day out of their rooms to play bingo in the big hall.

``Everybody plays and everybody wins,'' Leland tells the children. ``The game goes on until every vet has won at least one game and a few dollars. No one goes back to their room without something.''

And finally - on Veterans Day itself - the men in his post and their wives in the ladies auxiliary will stop by the Sepulveda VA to make sure every old soldier living there gets a little present on the day the nation has dedicated to them.

That's why he's standing in front of a Vons supermarket just before Veterans Day with his paper flowers, Leland Auger tells the children.

Because in Flanders Field, the poppies still blow.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com