South-African Legion B.E.S.L, What a HISTORY, please read the Wikipidia I litterarley copied and pasted as it deserves the respect  !!! (The size is 2.7 cm in hight & 2 cm wide).

History[]

After suffering the horrors of war in France and Flanders, thousands of men who fought on the British side in World War One underwent incredible hardship once they had been discharged from the armed services and returned to civilian life.

Realising the serious plight in which men found themselves, three prominent soldiers - Field Marshall Earl Haig, General the Rt. Hon. J C Smuts and General Sir H T Lukin - founded the British Empire Service League (BESL) at an inaugural meeting held in the City Hall, Cape Town on 21 February 1921. This is also the date of South African Armed Forces Day, following the proclamation by the former President of the Republic of South Africa and Commander-in-Chief of the South African National Defence Force, President, J.G. Zuma that 21 February every year be observed and commemorated as Armed Forces Day (AFD), where honour is paid to those that lost their lives in the fateful 1917 sinking of the .

The Legion is an active member organisation of the RCEL and HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is the High Patron of the Legion. The headquarters of the Legion were originally in Bloemfontein in the centre of the country, but moved to Johannesburg in 1942, where it still is, housed in the . 

The Legion is often mentioned in television news bulletins and websites, not only in connection with its remembrance activities, but also warning military veterans of scams aimed at them. As a non-racial military veterans organisation, the SA Legion has long remembered the tragic loss of the  in which more than 600 Black South African soldiers died. The Legion's UK Branch, made up of former South African servicemen and women, has also held a memorial service near the site of the sinking.