As another UK Remembrance weekend is upon us, I have been amazed at the dwindling number of Poppy sellers around.
I was in London this week for meetings and the only one’s that I came across were at Paddington mainline railway station.
I was surprised not to see any at London Underground station entrances. Plenty of ‘Free’ newspapers, but no poppies for sale! I wonder if this is affecting the fund raising of the Royal British Legion?
As a reminder and as part of their Never Say Die Remembrance Day series, BBC Two broadcast last night the story of the daughter of a former Far-East prisoner of war who was trying to prove that an anonymous wartime picture was of her father.
It was pretty tough viewing, but in the end Pat Bienkowski was able to prove that the emaciated person in the photo was in-deed her father. Sadly he died after coming back from the Far-East, clearly never fully recovering from his experiences. Anyone who watched the program cannot have been moved by hers and many of the Far-East WW II veterans stories.
Much has been written about the atrocities of war in general and about the horrors of the Holocaust, but I think more needs to be documented about the inhumane suffering that many Allied service people and their families went through during and well after the conflict was over.
Some additional links of interest.
- Far East Prisoners of War Community
- Children of Far East Prisoners of War
- WW2 Peoples War – Lieutenant AV Kent’s story
I do hope that you purchased your poppy and gave a reasonable donation.
Beasley's Place 