I AM researching for a book on the Audit, Finance and Pay Services during the First World War, and am keen to trace any local connection with the Regimental Pay Office Fulwood Barracks Preston for the period 1914 to 1920.

I am interested to make contact with any reader whose relatives may have been employed at the Regimental Pay Office Prestion during the First World War, military or civilian male or female.

I am particularly interested in tracing female clerks and lady superintendants who were recruited as temporary civil servants for duties with the Army Pay Services during the First World War, as the contribution of women during the First World War has generally been under represented in histories of the period.

I am also interested in any photographs that may exist of the buildings and the personnel. I have traced one civilian acting paymaster who was employed at the Regimental Pay Office Preston from 1915 to 1920.

He was Joseph Francis Nash who was born at Bath, Somerset in 1884 where he qualified as an accountant. Nash was commissioned into the Army Pay Department as a lieutenant in 1917, and was awarded an MBE for his services at Preston in 1918 or 1919.

Nash left the Army in 1920 and I believed that he remained in the Preston area, practising as an accountant with a local firm. He may well have married a local girl.

If any reader has knowledge of Nash or of other people connected with the Regimental Pay Office during the First World War period, I would like to make contact.

It goes without saying that any cost incurred through a reply would be refunded.

Dr John Black, 2 St Margaret's Drive, Henleaze BRISTOL BS9 4LW

Tel: 0117 9620729