AS it turns 100, the nation will today give thanks to the Royal British Legion for helping tens of thousands of our brave soldiers.
Prince Charles will lead tributes to the charity’s work for veterans and their families over the decades.
Yvonne Bennett sells new plastic-stemmed poppies and rattles a restyled collection box at the items’ launch in 1967
Jack Thorne and a pal make a wreath at the Legion’s poppy factory, Richmond, South West London, in 1948
It comes after Sun readers last year raised £10million for the Legion — famous for its red poppy emblem.
Co-founded by Battle of the Somme commander Field Marshall Hague, the Legion was set up in 1921 to support soldiers and sailors discharged from World War One.
After World War Two its membership hit three million in 1950.
Between the two world wars the organisation lobbied the Government to provide for anyone injured, disabled, widowed or orphaned due to active service.
Now, a century after it began, the charity is helping more than 90,000 veterans and their families, at a cost of £50million a year.
It successfully campaigned for the UK census to record the number of former service personnel — and it is currently fighting to scrap the £2,389 visa fees Commonwealth veterans must pay to stay in the UK.
Winston Churchill’s granddaughter, Celia Mary Sandys, looking at the Empire Field of Remembrance in Westminster in 1947
PM Neville Chamberlain buys a poppy on Armistice Day, 1937, outside Downing Street
Boozers proudly display their British Legion flag in Greenhithe, Kent in 1935
Mary Hall, from Grimethorpe, South Yorks, becomes the first woman to parade with the charity outside the Royal Albert Hall in 1949
Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald buys a poppy from a Red Cross nurse in St Jamess Park, 1932
When the Covid pandemic threatened to wreck last year’s Poppy Appeal because thousands of collectors were not allowed on the streets with their tins, YOU stepped in to help.
Our Poppy Stars campaign made sure the Legion’s annual fundraiser was not forgotten and directed the public to other ways of giving, including online donations.
In a ceremony at the Cenotaph in London this morning, representatives of the Royal Navy, Army, RAF and Merchant Navy will lay wreaths.
The event replicates the 9am ceremony exactly 100 years ago today when the British Legion was founded.
And amazing pictures, seen here, have revealed what life was like in the charity’s early days.
