Christmas came early for Bermuda’s community of war veterans and their widows as a team from the Royal Bermuda Regiment, backed by the Bermuda Legion, visited them with gifts yesterday.

Presents were put together from donations during the annual poppy appeal, held last month.

Among those on the Christmas list was Wilfred Steede, who at 102 is one of Bermuda’s few remaining veterans of the Second World War.

At a time when the island mobilised at home as well as sending soldiers overseas, Mr Steede served on the patrol boats that kept watch over Bermuda’s waters.

“I didn’t go overseas but I served in Bermuda in the navy,” Mr Steede said. “We were out going around the island.”

He was visited in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital’s Gordon Ward by Lieutenant Andrew Wallace, one of the ten RBR soldiers who spent yesterday morning showing their appreciation to veterans after loading up with donated items at Lindo’s Market in Devonshire.

“I’m not Santa but one tenth of Santa,” Mr Wallace told The Royal Gazette. “We get it all done in one morning.”

The legion stepped up its service this year to those who served and their widows, to assist the island’s active and former soldiers in need of health insurance.

The charity can be reached for details by e-mailing bermudalegion@gmail.com.