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Editor's Viewpoint: Poppy theft - what does it mean to the offenders?
After being robbed by a group of youths and left dazed, brave Lionel Broughton was back out in the town this week collecting for the Poppy Appeal.
Despite being registered blind for the last 16 years, Lionel has been a poppy selling in the period up to Remembrance Day for quite some time and is a very popular and well-known figure.
Considering this mugging happened in broad daylight in the town centre with people thronging all around I am a bit surprised, and disappointed, that at least a couple of the low life's who did this weren't apprehended.
I feel sure that the strength of character, fortitude and resilience of this war veteran is not respected by the people who did this to him, despite the fact that it is only because of Lionel and people like him that these louts can be here to behave in the way they do.
I would quickly like to speak for my generation and I'm sure lots of others, to just reassure Lionel that he, the survivors and of course mainly, the fallen, were not all wasting their time and giving up their lives for nothing.
I'm sure that many who saw the horrors of war and are now seeing out their years in the peace of victors really must wonder what the world (or at least our society), is coming to ... and what went wrong.
They must be hugely disappointed in many ways, but I would like to reassure them that there are many who give their time and effort get things done and continue, in many caring ways, to look after our returning heroes. And I would like to pay respect to them because they too are unsung heroes.
They do the jobs that governments can't or won't afford and they get very little help.
As this Remembrance Sunday , and Remembrance Day on November 11, come around we should think about what people went through.
I will think of my own grandfather, marching to war at the age of 14, a front line soldier for three and a half years.
God, we are lucky...
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Friday 10 February 2012
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