PLEASE can any Citizen readers help me trace my uncle Richard Charles Brock, who will be in his eighties by now.

I lost contact with uncle Dick in 1952 when I left to do my National Service, he was a blacksmith by trade, but following his war service with the RAF in India, he worked as a welder and chip range installer for T B Nelson, in Park Road, Preston.

I would love to meet him again and let him know of my plans to visit the WWI grave of my grandad, Sergeant Charles Edward Brock, who was buried in the village cemetery of Thiant, following his death on November 1, 1918, in the attack on Vallenciennes in the final push of the war. I have tried with little success to gain information regarding my grandfather, unfortunately 60 per cent of all WWI records were lost in the blitz on London in 1940, and it would appear his record was among them.

My grandmother Mary Rebecca Brock died quite young in the early forties, hence the fact that I have little or no family history to recount to my family.

Although family papers should have passed to the eldest son, my father, he unfortunately died during war service in Germany in WWII and is buried in Munster, North Germany.

I visited his grave to inter my late mother's ashes in March last year.

If any Citizen reader has information on Richard or his sister Marjorie, please contact me.

Mervyn Brock, 15 Newark Place, Preston, Tel: (01772) 862577

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