The Fusiliers are anxiously awaiting decisions on a couple of applications for funding this month; one to the European Regional Development Fund and the other to a fund which distributes land fill taxes.

We have deferred the second stage application to HLF from the end of this month until October -so that we will be able to give them a complete picture of the funding situation. It's a nerve racking time for us all - but no-one is idle as there is still a great deal of detailed wok to get on with - including continuing to flesh out the new displays.

This week, as the rain has tumbled down outside my office and I await funding news, I have been reading about the Chindit Expedition of 1944, where two battalions of Fusiliers found themselves fighting behind enemy lines in the most appalling weather conditions in Burma. The 1944 expedition fought its way on foot through 14 weeks of continuous enemy fire, in single file, to rendezvous with Chinese, Gurkha and British soldiers. Together they recaptured the town of Mogaung before the Chindits could leave Burma in the hands of the Chinese and return to India.

In the hot wet jungle conditions the men suffered from dysentery, suppurating leech bites and jungle sores; recurrent attacks of malaria that would usually have resulted in hospitalisation had to be walked off'. Nor was the capture of Mogaung the end of the expedition as it was a further four days walk after that to reach the airfield (from which they were flown out) through hot mud in temperatures like a tropical greenhouse. It was impossible to sit in the hot liquid mud and two men died of exhaustion.

During the whole Chindit campaign the Fusiliers lost 91 men. Historians still debate the usefulness of this suffering to the war effort but the determination and endurance of those who survived is unquestionable.

Frank Owen wrote: "So worn and battle stained had the uniforms become of all the armies fighting in this wilderness that the Chinese and Chindits tied orange strips to their hats and arms to distinguish each other from the Japanese. "

With nearly £300,000 still to be raised outside of formal applications to funding organisations for the Fusiliers' Museum and a second submission now due to reach the Heritage Lottery Fund at the end of October -we need to find some shadow of this grit within ourselves! Now that we have a little extra time to go that extra mile and make the £1.3million fundraising target - please do help us to make it! Our volunteers in the Campaign Office still have lots of bricks to sell, so if you haven't bought one yet for a present to someone else, as a memorial to a loved one - or to mark your own commitment to the museum project - please do!