Blind veteran set to march at Cenotaph
A BLIND veteran from Bristol is set to march at the Cenotaph in London on Remembrance Sunday.
Steve Moseley, 59, will be marching at the Cenotaph as part of the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations with more than 30 other blind veterans supported by Blind Veterans UK, the national charity for visionimpaired ex-Service men and women.
Steve joined the Army in 1978 as a Supply Controller and served for six years.
He says: “I really enjoyed my time in service, I played rugby and football. The comradeship was great. I was a boy soldier when I joined, and it really did set me up for the rest of my life”.
He lost his sight due to retinitis pigmentosa (RP) shortly after leaving the Army.
He says: “I went to the opticians when I left the army and they noticed that something wasn’t quite right, so they sent me to the eye hospital. They diagnosed me with RP but it was only mild. In 1994, I noticed that I was starting to walk into things, and it started to get worse. My field of vision is completely gone now, I live my life in a tunnel.”
He said he has been receiving support from Blind Veterans UK since 1995.
He said: “Thanks to the support from the charity, I became a multi-British blind sports champion in indoor and outdoor archery from 2000 until 2010. They provided me with the equipment and the financial support that I needed. In 2010, I was ranked the number one in the world with a compound bow and in 2011 I was a master bowman in the sighted world. I retired from archery in 2012”.
Steve will be marching with fellow blind veterans at the Cenotaph this Remembrance Sunday.
He said: “This will be my 20th time marching on Remembrance Sunday but this will be the first time that I march with my guide dog. I will be thinking of my grandfather who served in the Worcestershire regiment during the Battle of the Somme.”
Blind Veterans UK was founded more than 100 years ago to support those blinded in the First World War. Now, the charity supports veterans regardless of when they served or how they lost their sight.