This year’s poppy appeal will mark a special Remembrance Day — 100 years since the end of the “war to end all wars”.

Carol Everson, a caseworker with the Bermuda Legion, said poppies on sale this year carried a leaf to commemorate the centenary of the armistice that ended the First World War.

She added: “That’s appropriate, this being a special year of the centenary of peace after the First World War.”

Ms Everson was speaking as Second World War veterans Donald Jolliffe and Canon Thomas Nisbett presented the first poppy of the appeal to John Rankin, the Governor, at Government House.

She said the Legion was grateful to Colonel David Gibbons, a former commanding officer of the Royal Bermuda Regiment, for the donation of space on the ground floor of Thistle House on Burnaby Hill in Hamilton for this year’s poppy shop.

The shop, staffed by volunteers, sell poppies throughout the appeal, which will run from November 1 to 11.

Also available are posters listing the names of the island’s veterans from the 1914-18 conflict and a booklet on the history of Bermudians involved.

Britain’s last surviving combat soldier of the Great War trenches, Harry Patch, who served with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and was known as “The Last Tommy”, died in July 2009 aged 111.

Ms Everson said that, although there were no veterans left from the First World War, veterans from the Second World War were now old and frail and needed extra support.

She said: “Everything we raise goes for Bermuda’s Second World War veterans and their widows.

“We also provide advocacy and support for their families.

“Although there are fewer Second World War veterans now, their welfare is costing more worldwide and has gone up considerably since pensions and benefits were offered by the Bermuda Government in 2007.”

• To volunteer, or to learn more about the Legion’s work, contact Carol Everson at 703-1020