Remberance Week starts today
During the course of this week, there’s sure to be a number of people walking around with a red poppy, like the one I’m wearing tonight. But how many of us know the real meaning behind this little red flower and just how important it is that we give generously to the poppy appeal. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods stopped by the Ex-Services League this afternoon to get the facts of the flower.
Terence Belisle, Manager, Secretariat Office
“We don’t want you to forget. We want the young people to know that it was because of men like myself and all those seventy-five people for whom we can account for, the sacrifice that we have made. Because we didn’t know what type of sacrifice we going to be demanded of us. It’s when we got over there, then we realise. It’s a painful thing to talk about.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Seventy-nine year old Terence Belisle was twenty-two years old when he volunteered to serve for the Royal Airforce during World War II.
Terence Belisle
“We were all in our nineteens and twenties and I suppose we wanted to get away for adventure mostly, because we didn’t know what war was. When we got there, we realise what it was all about and we saw the dangers, the difficulties, the problems and all the hardships that the people of Europe and England went through. We partook in all those difficulties because we volunteered; we weren’t enlisted, we volunteered for the service and we did whatever was assigned to us to be done.”
Today there are seventy-five surviving Belizean veterans. The men are supported through activities held by the Belize Ex-Services League. However, most of the funds are received from the annual poppy sale.
Terence Belisle
“This is our life blood, this is everything that has to give a contribution to those who are disabled, and those who are in a sense don’t have anybody to take care of them. Because a lot of World War II veterans are handicapped somewhere or the other, or they don’t have anybody to live with them or they are not living with anybody. So those are the people that we labour for, to see that they are taken care of and that they are not forgotten.”
Reporting for News 5, Jacqueline Woods.
The Ex-Services League has planned a week of activities throughout the country.
