As it prepares to launch its annual Poppy Appeal across the UK, the Northern Ireland branch of the Legion said that the ongoing conflicts mean that increasing numbers of soldiers needed its assistance.

And, as the old soldiers, who for years were the backbone of the Poppy Appeal, become unable to help raise funds; the Legion has appealed for new volunteers to take their place.

The annual autumn funding drive for the armed forces' welfare charity raises millions of pounds each year to help ex-servicemen and women, who are continuing to return from Iraq and Afghanistan with horrific injuries.

Last week the mother of one teenage Royal Irish Soldier, Andy Allen, who lost both legs and is still blind after a Taliban attack in July, told of how she saw her terribly maimed son lying unconscious in a hospital bed before his second leg was amputated.

Samantha Creighton, the Legion's community fundraiser for both Northern Ireland and the Republic, said that there were many serving and former soldiers who needed help to rebuild their lives.

"We have noticed an increase in the number of people coming to us for help in the last two or three years," she said.

"The age of men and women coming to us for help is also getting considerably lower – often young men and women with families.

"In the last two years, people coming to us aged 35 and under have increased by 30 per cent."

She said that, despite increases in the amounts donated to the Poppy Appeal in recent years, the Legion was struggling to find volunteers in some parts of the Province.

"In some our areas we would be struggling to find new people.

"We've had a lot of elderly people who have worked really hard for us down through the years but now we are finding that they are dying off and one of our major issues is trying to recruit new blood.

"To be a volunteer, we're trying to find trustworthy, friendly people, with good character and a belief in what the Legion does.

"They just need to be decent upstanding people.

"To help with the Poppy Appeal, it's really only a two-month period that you need to volunteer for – maybe two hours four times a month during that time.

"The poppies come to us ready-made and these people would either be delivering them to shops, where people can make donations, retiring offerings in churches and general collections in supermarkets, on the street and house-to-house.

"People are very unaware that 100 per cent of the money that comes in from the Poppy Appeal – more than £900,000 each year – is spent on welfare services in Northern Ireland, so families who are in crisis financially or emotionally or are physically disabled can be helped."

For more details of how to volunteer, contact Samantha Creighton on 93 349052 or 07810815400 or email screighton@britishlegion.org.uk