Charity History

Hong Kong First. The Royal British Legion was founded in London on 15 May1921, uniting four ex-servicemen's organisations under Field Marshal EarlHaig, who refused to be associated with any one of them separately. HongKong did not wait for London: the Branch was registered here in April, amonth before.

The Cenotaph was unveiled in Central on Empire Day 1923, an almost exact
replica of Lutyens' memorial in Whitehall. It bore "The Glorious Dead" alone until
the dates 1939–1945 were added, and in the 1970s a Chinese inscription — 英魂
不朽 浩氣長存 — was cut into the stone. Declared a monument in 2013, it, remains the focus of Remembrance Sunday in Hong Kong.
 

1941. The Battle of Hong Kong and the occupation that followed reached every
community in the territory. British, Canadian, Indian and locally raised units fought in the defence of the city. More than 2,000 of the Commonwealth dead have no known grave and are named on the Sai Wan Memorial; others lie at Sai Wan andat Stanley, alongside the civilian internees who died in the same years.
 

The post-war Branch. The Branch in its present form was established in 1954 and has grown alongside the other bodies that make up Hong Kong's veteran
community: the associations that merged in 1997 to form the HKESA, the World
War II Veterans' Association, the Hoi Luen Society, and the successor organisationto the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) after its disbandment in 1995.
 

1997 and after. The handover changed the shape of the obligation, not the fact of  it. The Hong Kong Locally Enlisted Personnel Trust was founded in 1992 to provide for former locally enlisted personnel beyond 1997, and we have worked with it ever since.
 

Our community is smaller each year, and older. The work is more urgent now, not less.