On Friday evening, 10th November, we heard that ex team member and former Horwich Church Minister Mike Thomason, serving with the British Army as a Chaplain with the Combat Support Engineer Regiment in Iraq, had been injured in a rocket attack on his camp in Basra, and had sustained a serious fractured arm injury.

He was airlifted into RAF Brize Norton on an aeromedical evacuation flight on Saturday 16th November, and has since been recovering (but still awaiting a full operation on his arm injury) in a hospital in the UK. with his wife and new baby being flown over from their Army home in Germany to be by his side.

All of us in the team wish Mike a full recovery, and considering his (relative) good fortune in coming under a rocket attack and ’ only ’ sustaining the injury he received, we can now add to his long list of nicknames given to him when in the team, the new one of ’Lucky’