ANZAC Day on 25 April is ten days away but today is Poppy Day, when RSA fundraising takes to the streets and to the Internet.
The annual Poppy Appeal is the primary source of funds for the RSA’s extensive provision of support services to war veterans and the ex-service community.
You don’t have to be a member of an RSA to benefit from the Poppy Appeal assistance. Donations are used to support veterans as well as ex-servicemen and women, and their dependents, living in the community where the funds are raised.
The poppy reminds us of sacrifices made – both past and present. Poppies were the first flowers that grew in the battlefields of Flanders in Belgium during World War One and are a symbol of remembrance and hope.
The Poppy Day street collection is held each year on the Friday before Anzac Day. RSA volunteers exchange distinctive red poppies for a donation to the Poppy Appeal.
So please make whatever donation you can afford on Poppy Day. Your generosity enables us to continue our vital support work.
Your NZ 
Jay3
/ 15th April 2016If that is the case, why did they use funds from last year’s Poppy Appeal to support their campaign to retain the colonial cringe that is our current flag. I want my donation back.
Missy
/ 15th April 2016Alloney raised in the poppy appeal remains in the region it was raised in, if you have evidence that shows the RSA in your region spent money on things other than what they said they did then you can perhaps contact them for an explanation on that.
On the other matter, not being in MZ I wasn’t aware that the RSA actually spent any money in campaigning for the flag, I only saw anything from them in interviews, in Twitter and their website, what did they spend money on? It is possible any money they spent was not from the poppy appeal but rather their clubs and bars – can you show where poppy appeal money was spent inappropriately?
Missy
/ 15th April 2016Okay, I have just realised there are some spelling errors in the comment I made last night – probably because I did it on my phone!
Alloney should be only
MZ should be NZ
Sorry if my fat fingered phone typing confused anyone. 😏
Kitty Catkin
/ 15th April 2016Please tell me that spellcheck didn’t turn only into alloney, that would make the spellcheck hall of fame !
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2016“All money” surely?
Missy
/ 16th April 2016Actually Kitty I think Alan is right, it was all money or only money most likely typed! No excuses for my brain fade!
Pickled Possum
/ 15th April 2016In Flanders Fields.
Written by Canadian poet, Colonel John McCrae
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
Scarcely 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.
bjmarsh1
/ 15th April 2016As a veteran, thank you for remembering them. God bless you all.
Kitty Catkin
/ 15th April 2016I have been to places like Ypres in Belgium-too awful for words, the names and names and names on the Menin Bridge…some were something like ‘John Jones (enlisted as Fred Brown) aged 15’-or in a few cases ‘aged 14.’ Those ones still make me go cold when I remember them. They were ALL so young, or almost all. I remember being on the bridge on Armistice Day at night-it was cold like you wouldn’t believe. Snow, sleet, wind that would have the face off you-and they had been fighting in that with, I suppose, a paraffin stove like my antique ones if they were really lucky and nothing at all if they weren’t. It became really bad as we were driving, but we were so far along that we really had to keep going and stay with the British Legion if we had to-if it had been as bad when the service was over, we couldn’t have driven back, but it wasn’t. Just the ordinary (???) snow, sleet and icy wind. I kept thinking that those boys (and many of them were boys) were fighting in that ! I offered up my distress at being so cold (it wouldn’t have mattered what one was wearing, the cold went right through it) as a tiny and inadequate offering of gratitude, It was so cold that the tears froze on my face. And the winter wasn’t at its worst-this was November 11.Heaven knows what it was like in January.
Missy
/ 16th April 2016The Menin Gate is so very sad, and endless list of names. I visited my Grandfather’s Uncle’s grave outside of Ypres, and walked around the cemetery, compared to all of the other’s buried there he was pretty old (in his 30’s).
I visited the cemetery where the NZ unknown warrior was originally interred on Anzac Day a number of years back, it was the day that the Huey crashed on its way to the Anzac Day flyover in Wellington, it was sobering to be standing in a cemetery surrounded by graves of NZ soldiers on a day when 3 more of our service people had been so tragically killed.
Iceberg
/ 16th April 2016Is there anything more tragic than the names of thousands of young men written on stone.
Gezza
/ 16th April 2016Yes. The millions of innocent men. women and children whose names are not written in stone.
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2016I really dislike it when there’s an incident with the loss of many lives and we hear that ‘many of them were women and children’ as if the men who were killed don’t matter and aren’t even worth acknowleging ! How sexist. Imagine if a reporter said ‘350 people were killed, among them men and children.’ It just wouldn’t happen.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 16th April 2016Visited the graves on Crete – full of young New Zealanders. A place of tears for sure.
Kitty Catkin
/ 15th April 2016Here lie dead we.because we did not choose
To live, and shame the land from which we sprung-
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, and we were young.
AE Housman
Kitty Catkin
/ 16th April 2016I saw on the news that an NZ woman who drove ambulances is being commemorated-the story wasn’t very flattering to the who knows how many other women did the same thing in WWI and who were totally ignored as if this woman was the only one. There were brigades of them, and contrary to what the woman who was talking about it seemed to think, many women did, in fact, drive cars before then, I hate to think that schoolchildren are being told that this was a real rarity and something not to be expected of women then.
It’s a complete distortion of the facts. Not to mention being really patronising !