YOUR military musuem needs you ...that's the clarion call to ex-servicemen of the Worcester area!

In about a year's time, the Regimental Museum at the City Museum and Art Gallery in Foregate Street is to undergo a £500,000 uplift and expansion.

It's to be an ambitious joint venture by the Worcestershire Regiment and Worcestershire Yeomanry associations and the City Council Museums Service and is to receive substantial Lottery funding.

It will be christened afresh as the Museum of the Worcester Soldier.

The existing military museum will be transformed and significantly expanded into one comprehensive and exciting display telling the story of the city and county regiments and of the effects of warfare on Worcester and its people.

But what is desperately needed to give even wider interest and colour to the redeveloped military museum is the personal recollections of local ex-servicemen, especially those who served in the Second World War and in the conflicts in Malaya and Korea.

Stuart Hadaway, project officer and research co-ordinator for The Worcester Soldier Project, would dearly like to hear from all ex-servicemen willing to tell their stories and give their war memories, particularly those who served in the Worcestershire Regiment, the Yeomanry or in the Worcester "Gunners" (the local Royal Artillery TA batteries).

"We hope to produce a social history of military life too, revealing the living conditions, rations and the like."

Ex-servicemen's oral testimonies will be recorded and used in the revamped museum, either in files for research purposes or as actual sound recordings to be heard by visitors through earphones.

Documentary or other objects of wartime memorabilia would also be very welcome.

Overall, Stuart says the aim is to feature more displays and memories of the 20th Century, particularly the Second World War period. There will be a replica dug out, a barrack room setting, and even a scale model of a parachute soldier apparently descending from the roof!

There will also be displays focusing on the Home Guard, the ARP and the Land Army.

If you would like to contribute your memories to the projected Museum of the Worcester Soldier, please write to Stuart Hadaway at the City Museum, Foregate Street, Worcester WR1 1DT.