Lancashire North Branch Despatch issue 17: May 2016 

The front page of this Despatch takes on an unusual layout to display to best effect the photograph of Lady Mary Gerard and Corporal Daniel Finch MM.  After Editor’s Musing on Page 2 is the story behind the photo and of Corporal Finch’s war.  Then follows Niall Cherry’s account of how Richard Townsend, a farm labourer from Warton was killed on 1st July 1916.  Also read inside about the British air campaign above the Somme battlefield; a Kentish tale in which he tells the Deputy Chaplain General about the best padre he had met; the Distinguished Conduct Medal won by Sergeant John Hodgson of the King’s Own Royal Lancaster’s;   a report on museums; the meeting programme to the end of 2016; Stewart Bond’s Great War Exhibition and more.