John Clarence Matthews

On rare occasions the service record of a WWI soldier provides a direct link to the research I do to return a medal. 

In this case,  the service record of 3607 Private John Clarence Matthews, provides documentary evidence he lost his British War Medal and Victory Medal in the 1930s then in 1955 applied for and received replacements. This Victory Medal is the original as there is no (R) for replacement or (D) for duplicate.

The medal was sent to me as part of the RSL Care SA collection I received in February 2022.

Thanks to the assistance of Bronwyn B, I've been put in contact with John's granddaughter. I'll be sending the medal back to the family in the near future.

The returned medal tally is now 2812.

A return and a reunite

Returning a medal is a fairly uncommon event. Similarly, reuniting one medal with another from the same group is also uncommon. Doing both is extremely rare in my experience. However, that is what has happened with the medals awarded to 27168 Kenneth George Hallett, RAN.    

The first thing I found out about Kenneth was that his first period of service was in the 3rd Battalion, Volunteer Defence Corps with the number Q202042. This was from December 1941 to March 1944. Then he joined the Royal Australian Navy on 24 August 1944 through to 19 September 1946. His medals are hand engraved which was one method used by the RAN.

Kenneth's life was a bit of a mystery following WW2 but I found him on an Ancestry tree and sent the owner a message. That's when the story of his medals got interesting.

The tree owner is a relation of Kenneth's named Simone. She told me that she has had a fascination with her family's military history. She had replica group of her grandfather's medals made as well as being the custodian of her great great uncle's medal. At about the same time she received a random message that two of Kenneth's medals were for sale in an antique store. Simone bought Kenneth's 1939-45 Star and War Medal knowing it wasn't the complete group. When I contacted Simone it can as a surprise that I had another medal awarded to Kenneth. I'm not sure what his full entitlement is but there is at least the Australian Service Medal 1939-45 still out there.

Thanks to Graeme W who sent me Kenneth's Pacific Star, which will soon be returned to his family and reunited with two other of his medals.

The retuned medal tally is now 2811.

Edward Peacock

I had a lot of luck in this search; more of that later.

The medal, along with two other WWI medals awarded to British soldiers, came from Jenni who found them amongst her father's possessions. My friend Sandra was the intermediary who posted the medals. Jenni and Sandra live in WA. 

British soldiers who served in WWI are sometimes difficult to positively identify especially when they don't have a middle name. Often there are no records which provide date of birth or parents details. Every so often a service or pension record, which wasn't destroyed during WWII is available on Ancestry. And that is the case with 1070 GNR Edward Peacock. 

Within 10 minutes of starting this search I found Edward's pension records which showed he enlisted on 11 February 1914 aged 17 years, 10 months, which was pre WWI. He served in various artillery regiments then in August 1918 he received a gun shot wound. The pension record provided his residential address. From there it was pretty easy to narrow down Edward's family. He is included on several Ancestry family trees and it is clear he never married. Descendants of his sister's family moved to Australia and settled in WA which explains why the medal was in WA.

One of the Ancestry trees belongs to Edwards great great niece who lives in WA so the medal is going back to where is was posted to me from. 

The returned medal tally is now 2810.