REGARDING the continuing saga of Bolton’s connection to two recipients of the VC.

Lieut Sandys Clarke was born and married as Willward Alexander Sandys Clarke.

Willward has sometimes been mistranscribed as Wilward with one L but Wilwood is definitely an error. The VC book is wrong.

Having made typing errors for publication myself I can assure you that just because something makes it into print doesn’t automatically make it right!

Any error in the naming of a VC in the London Gazette is a) highly unlikely and b) certain to have been corrected in a later edition. It wasn’t.

To complicate matters further, he was apparently known to family and friends as Peter!

Indeed, his wedding photograph in the Bolton Journal calls him Lt Peter Sandys Clarke.

His father was William Edward Clarke of Harwood Lodge, who changed his name to Sandys Clarke by deed poll in March 1941 to incorporate his wife’s maiden name.

Lt Sandys-Clarke was born in Southport in 1919. His residence by the time of his marriage to Dorothy Irene Deakin in Belmont on July 12, 1941, is given as Harwood Lodge, Harwood, the parental home. He then lived with his mother-in-law and new wife at Dimple Hall, Egerton — at least when he was on leave. He is remembered with honour on Dunscar war memorial. There is also a memorial to him in Southport, along with four other Southport VCs. Was he a Boltonian? No. Was he a Turton man? Arguably, by virtue of his marriage and brief residence.

Francis Arthur Jefferson was born, raised and educated in Ulverston, where again they are rightly very proud of him as one of their own. He first arrived in Bolton long after the war and spent the worst years of his life here as he entered a spiral of depression, unemployment, drink problems, the cruel theft of his VC and eventual suicide.

Was he an exceptionally brave man who deserved a better life — particularly in Bolton — and our eternal gratitude? Yes. Was he a Boltonian? No.

Neither of them were “forgotten”

heroes. W A Sandys Clarke was killed in action and is properly memorialised at several locations — he is not on Bolton’s Roll of Honour because that refers exclusively to the fallen of the old Bolton County Borough.

F A Jefferson is very well remembered in his home Lancashire town of Ulverston.

My point is that there are no recipients of the Victoria Cross who were born and bred in Bolton or even within the bounds of the expanded borough. To attempt to co-opt two VC holders as “Boltonians” is unworthy of us as town and somewhat disrespectful to the memory of two courageous men.

Brian Mills Rushey Field Bromley Cross