Just over 150 people attended the Veterans Day event hosted by the 11-11-11 Club today at the Red Rose Memorial Post No. 2435 in Columbia. The Annual Banquet and Memorial Service honors military veterans.

Harold Billow, one of two remaining survivors of the Malmedy Massacre during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, was the guest speaker at the event.

“The VFW conducted its first poppy distribution before Memorial Day in 1922, becoming the first veterans’ organization to organize a nationwide distribution. The poppy soon was adopted as the official memorial flower of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States.”