The story started when I received a Korean War Pair from Elaine of The Green Shed. The naming on the medals reads A37560 F. L Daniel. This can be clearly seen in the pictures. Frustratingly, this number, initial and name combination did not match anyone. There was no entry on the DVA Korean War nominal roll. Initially, we all thought that this was a RAN number.
My next step was to the question of who was F. L. Daniel on the Defence military history forum. The answers I got was very surprising. Flight Sergeant Dave B and Mr Wayne W offered a hypothesis and then they were able to prove it. The closeset person that Dave and Wayne found was O37560 SQNLDR Frank John Daniel. Using these details as a start point the following emerged. Frank John Daniel joined the RAAF in 1951 as enlisted aircrew. Around 1957 the RAAF made all aircrew officers so numbers simply had the suffix changed from A to O. It now seems that there is just a simple error on the medal and the 'L' should be a 'J'.
I now know that Frank served in Korea in 1953.
Armed with this information I was able to follow Frank and his family through the electoral rolls. Frank lived in Canberra after he left the RAAF. The electoral roll also provided me with the name of Frank's son. As it turned out Frank died in 2012 in the hospital opposite my office. His death notice confirmed his son's name and I found a likely candidate in the White Pages. The surprises didn't stop there. In 1964 Frack received a Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air and in 1971 the Air Force Cross.
Thanks to Roland T's search efforts we found the 2012 request for information for Frank's official obituary which linked all this information together.
My hunch about Frank's son proved correct and last night I spoke to him. As it turns out it was only recently that Frank's property was cleaned out and the group that provided the service was linked to the Green Shed and that is how Elaine received the medals.
The returned medal tally is now 1689.
Good outcome in the end :)
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