The least we can do is wear a poppy for the unseen and unheard - Susan Dalgety

I have already lost my first poppy of 2022. I pinned it on my coat after a visit to Edinburgh’s Garden of Remembrance in Princes Street a few days ago.

By the time I reached Victoria Street, where I was meeting friends for lunch, it had gone. After all these years, I still haven’t worked out the knack of securing a flimsy paper poppy to my lapel with nothing more than a dressmaking pin.

My lack of dexterity works in favour of Poppyscotland of course, as I will have to buy a few more poppies before Remembrance Day on Friday 11 November, but I don’t begrudge a single penny.

In my youth I used to insist on wearing a white poppy, to signify my pacifism, but as I matured, I realised I wasn’t a pacificist. I don’t like wars and conflict, but like the grandmothers in Ukraine who signed up for civilian combat training, I would defend my community and family from invasion.

I am eternally grateful to the men and women who gave their life so that we can live in freedom today, and to their comrades-in-arms who today stand ready to defend us and our allies.

I’m grateful, too, to Poppyscotland, which has to raise more than £10,000 a day to carry out their work supporting the half million members of the Armed Forces community in Scotland.

The charity offers a lifeline to veterans and their families whenever they need it, whether it is a soldier who leaves the army and immediately needs help to adjust to civilian life, or one who falls homeless 50 years after hanging up his uniform.

Earlier this year I stood in a silent graveyard in northern France, reading the names of young men who had died so I could live in peace. Men like 32 year-old R.J. Andrews, an RAF gunner who was killed on 1 June 1944.

The Scottish Poppy Appeal launched at Edinburgh Garden of Remembrance last week. Susan Dalgety has since lost her first poppy of 2022 - but will happily buy another in gratitude for the sacrifice of others. PIC: Lisa Ferguson/National World.

His stark white headstone bore the inscription: “Unseen, unheard but always near.”

Thankfully, in 2022 the work of our armed forces is largely unseen and unheard, except for ceremonial occasions, but it is as necessary as ever. And the least we can do is to buy a poppy – or several – to say thank you.