JWR Hatton

This search commenced last week when my colleague, Ben W bought in a bag of medals. The story he tells me is that his father is a second hand dealer and over the years he had purchased items that have included medals. All up there were six medals in the bag. There is a single medal that is still being researched and a WWII group of five awarded to NX71777 John William Robert Hatton.
It didn't take long to find John on an Ancestry family tree so I fired of a message to the tree owner.
Today, Ben and I were rewarded with a response from Kerry, the tree owner. Kerry tells us:

You probably realise that John William Robert Hatton [was] my Great Uncle. He was like most of my ancestors and did not marry.
He was my Grandmothers brother and I remember a photo of him and my father telling me that he never married.
I have [another] great uncles watch that was given to him from his employer when he went off to WW1. [With the medals] I will have two items that belong to my Great Uncles.

I'll soon send off John's medals to Kerry  and many thanks to Ben and his father for wanting to see these medals returned.

The returned medal tally is now 2377.

James McElhinney

This is the final set of Remount Unit medals that were sent to me by Murray M. The other two groups were to Henry Beauchamp and Matthew Kelly. This 1914-15 Star and Victory Medal were awarded to 1355 James McElhinny, 5th Squadron, 2nd Australian Remount Unit.
I thought that James would be easy to follow due to his distinctive surname. This was not so as there was a James Alexander McElhinney living in NSW at the same time. As it turned out they died only a year apart and this caused a bit of confusion. The James I was searching for was born in Braidwood, NSW and lived for a while in Goulburn, NSW before settling in Sydney. He was 49 years old when he enlisted. James was married to Alice Elenaor Wray but that didn't have any children. This led me on a search for the descendants of James' sister but unfortunately this family line ended in 1930 when James' four year old great niece died.
It took me two months to get to this point so this morning I went back and looked at Alice's family and soon found the family tree of her brother. I've now been in contact with Jame's great great niece and will be soon sending her his medals.
This closes this the Remount search started by Murray but he has already set me on another path to research a British RAMC Victory Medal.
The returned medal tally is now 2372.