For the 4th year on the trot, Royal Russell CCF participated in London Poppy Day. On Thursday 31st October, a team of 15 cadets and their officers travelled up to London Victoria Station to sell Poppies and raise as much money as they could for the Royal British Legion. We all enjoyed talking to the members of the public, listening to the talented Band of the Scots Guard and even meeting some very important people!

As a contingent, we managed to raise a whopping £29,000! Although we were all exhausted by the end of the day, we all had lots of fun raising money for this important cause.

We had an early start, meeting at 0500hrs at Royal Russell, before making our way to London Victoria by public transport. After a detailed briefing from the RBL Station Commander, we received our poppy themed merchandise and started to set up our stands in the most appealing way possible, to catch the eye of potential supporters. In order to keep us fuelled for the day, the Officers provided all CCF volunteers with a McDonalds breakfast meal, which was gratefully received.

Not long after, we started selling hundreds of poppies and raising hundreds of pounds by the minute. It seemed like we were going to run out of poppies at the rate we were selling at! This year, it was the dated enamel poppy pin which proved to be most popular. We also met some very special people, including Harry Clark from the Traitors, a Chelsea Pensioner, and even a WW2 RAF pilot! We also had a visit from the Secretary of State for Defence, John Healey MP. This was a truly incredible experience and some massive highlights to the day.

We all worked hard and our spirits were kept high by the band’s renditions of some very well known tunes and our drive to beat our goal of £26,000 from last year. After a busy 13 hours of fundraising, we finally sold our last poppy at 1900hrs and packed up our stands, ready to return home. As expected, we all enjoyed this day thoroughly and left Victoria Station with aching feet, various poppies we purchased during the day and a sense of accomplishment after what we achieved. We had a lot of fun this year at London Poppy Day and will definitely be back to raise even more money next year.

Sergeant Yasothar