THOUSANDS of poppies have been dropped over an airfield to launch Suffolk’s Poppy Appeal.

Children ran among the falling poppies as they dropped from a low-flying aircraft over Wattisham Airfield, near Stowmarket.

Families, soldiers and veterans were all at the launch with children from Ringshall Primary School and Wattisham Airfield Childcare Centre.

Margaret Buttle, secretary of Haughley Royal British Legion, was one of the organisers of the event: “We’ve had a lovely day, we actually had 8,000 poppies come from a Yak, which is an old Russian training plane. The poppies fell over the football and rugby pitches.

“Everyone was in the field as the Yak did a fly past, then we knew where he was coming from.

“At exactly 11am he flew over and released the poppies and as you can imagine the children just ran to catch as many of the poppy petals as they could,” she said.

“I think people are very much behind the poppy appeal. People think the British Legion are here for two weeks but we are not, we are here for 52 weeks all the time.

“We are here for the veterans, the soldiers still serving, their partners and all of the serving families,” she added.

Last year’s appeal in Suffolk raised more than �670,000 and Mrs Buttle is hopeful they can raise more this time.

Each poppy dropped represented every two lives lost in conflicts since 1946.

It was the second time the county’s launch was at Wattisham.