THE last time we'd worked on Westbury Street, Thornaby, was on the awful night of May 27 1975, in the wake of Britain's worst coach crash. Thirty two women, friends and neighbours from the area of honest working terraces known as The Five Lamps, died when their day trip ended in disaster at Devil's Bridge, in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire.

The coach, hired from another neighbour in Thornaby, careered out of control down a steep hill, plunged 16 feet into a ravine and ended on its roof. Organiser Dorothy White, known to local children as Aunty Dorothy and to their elders as an angel, was among the victims. Fourteen, seriously injured, survived.

Back beneath the Five Lamps, people gathered on street corners and in the police station waiting room, able to speak but never once to make sense.

"It's a bit like VE Day gone wrong," someone said.

Then as now, the Salvation Army was quickly on the scene, handing our cigarettes and sympathy. "There was a terrible lot of trauma, hardly a family which wasn't terribly affected in some way," recalls Maureen Gillson.

"You expected death when people had been ill, but this was all so sudden, and so many. We just had to try to sit people down, counsel them, so much to do and yet so little we could do.

"Of course they wondered where God was in all of that, but my faith never shifted, not for a moment."

Maureen was brought to Thornaby Salvation Army as a baby, 69 years ago, committed herself when she was just eight and joyfully joined the Corps' 120th anniversary celebrations last weekend.

We sang Our God Reigns. On a saturated Sunday morning, it was possible to wonder with the grammarians if it might not have been a homonym.

They've been at the Westbury Street citadel since 1939, though the anniversary photographic exhibition snapped back to the early part of the century when cubs were known as "Chums", members were adjutants or adherents and the Sunday School held fancy dress "demonstrations".

Notices in the foyer still give details of social activities like lunch clubs and brownies, drop-in club and parent and toddler group.

"It's an attempt to make the Gospel relevant, to meet people where they are," says Lt Gordon Hull, in charge at Thornaby for just five weeks and previously a Cleveland ambulanceman.

A non-Christian even after marrying the Corps' sergeant major's daughter at Grangetown, he attended the meetings at which their four children were dedicated and finally heard the message. "You can't close your ears for ever. I had lots of things wrong in my life and realised I needed a new start," he says.

"Really it was just a case of swapping uniforms and I like this one better. It's a big help being a local lad, you understand the sense of humour."

The 10am meeting is led by Mike and Jenny Clark, officially territorial evangelists - the territory is Great Britain - and the only non-commissioned Salvationists ever to hold the post. The week previously they'd been at Shiremoor, on North Tyneside, last weekend at Thornaby, this one - who knows - in New York.

For 23 years they led the Mike Clark Orchestra and Singers, playing everything from the Miss World finals in Athens - Ronnie Corbett and Leslie Crowther were on the same bill - to the Battle of Britain dance at RAF Linton-on-Ouse.

They've been in step with the Army 14 years, bringing their own state-of-the art audio-visual equipment. There's a big bass drum, too. "Music to us is like a stepping stone, it's something to launch from," says Mike.

Mike mentions what they might have earned before and what jointly they earn now, asks for details not to be published. Suffice that if the Salvation Army were subject to low pay legislation the General would languish in chains.

"We love it," says Jenny, demonstrably.

About 60 are present, including ten youngsters and 92-year-old Joe White, at Thornaby since 1941 and as faithful as any soldier alive.

Jenny's challenging presentation (as in modern management a sermon would be called) embraces everything from her mother-in-law - "such a gracious lady, but transformed when the wrestling comes on television" - to a little bit of magic with the scriptures.

A conjuring trick with the Bible, as a former Bishop of Durham almost said.

First the pages of her book appear blank - "some people say there's nothing in the Bible" - then a couple of young volunteers are invited to blow on it, just as our own bairns were urged to blow at traffic lights whenever they turned red.

As with the traffic lights it eventually worked and words and pictures appeared - "breathing life into the Bible," said Jenny, who wonders afterwards if we've seen the sleight of hand.

We haven't even seen the hand.

Upbeat, the meeting ends with Crown Him With Many Crowns and with anniversary bookmarks made in Holme House prison in Stockton.. Someone in the row in front suggests that it's been a bit scripted, which seems rather unfair. The anniversary morning has been vibrantly different. The oil burns in the Five Lamps yet.