Alfred and Samuel Morey

Some stories are really complicated to tell due to family complexities, the passages of time or side stories that just seem to over take the medal and the soldier.
In this case it is probably better to start with what I know and then introduce a tangent.
I was recently sent a Queen's South Africa Medal awarded to 573 Troop Alfred Charles Morey who served with the Victorian Bushman. I also received the 1914-15 and British War Medal awarded to 3025 Samuel George Morey, 1 Divisional Ammunition Column, AIF. These came to me from Adrian F of South Coogee.
Unraveling the connection between Alfred and Samuel was a little confusing but I eventually confirmed they were brothers. All this research also led me to James Mathew Morey but more about him later.
A letter that Alfred sent to his mother from South Africa was published in the papers and makes for interesting reading. A copy of this letter is below. In the letter Alfred mentions his wife but I could not find any evidence that they had children.
Samuel was a different story. He was the father of many children, several of who served in WWI:
665 Gunner Percival Henry Morey.
91 SGT Walter Henry Morey who was awarded a Meritorious Service Medal.
11777 Gunner William Ormsby Morey who was Mentioned in Dispatches.
It was through Percival's line that I have been able to contact the current generation. Percival and his wife Olga had a number of children. Their eldest son was Dennis and it is his family who I'll send the medals to. Here are the pictures of Alfred and Samuel's medal and Alfred's letter. James' story is further down the page.
The returned medal tally is now 2010.

Now back to Alfred and Samuel's brother, James. 568 Trooper James Matthew also served in the Victorian Bushman. He was a police constable in Victoria but it is the story of James and the regimental mascot, 'Bushie', which really makes for interesting reading.

Ronald Brookman

Ronald Charles Brookman was from Melbourne and in 1941, at age 23, he enlisted in the 5th Battalion of the Victorian Scottish Regiment as V55082 PTE Brookman. However, later in 1941 he transferred to the RAAF and served as 410114 Flight Sergeant Brookman.
Ron was a member of 463 Squadron of Bomber Command and was a navigator on Lancaster aircraft. On 26 September 1944 while on a bombing mission over France, Ron's plane came down. This is the AWM record of the flight. Ron and the rest of the crew are buried at Wissant Communal Cemetery near Pas De Calais. This link shows the panel at the AWM where Ron is listed.
Ron's family placed several notices in the news paper after his death and this article also appeared.

Source: The Argus (Melbourne, Vic), Saturday 19 January 1946, page 9 

Ron's WWII War Medal came to me from the NSW RSL. It had originally been found around Tea Gardens. Using electoral rolls I established that Ron's brother Harold lived in that area for several years and died in Port Macquarie in 2009. Harold also served during WWII. Harold and Ron had two sisters, Gwen and Edna. It didn't take long to follow both Gwen and Edna through the electoral rolls up until 1980. Edna was married to another WWII veteran, Donald Miller, who was awarded a Mention in Dispatches. This is the AWM document about the award.
Following a hunch I had a look in the White Pages in the general area I knew that Edna was living in 1980 and to my surprise I found her listed at the same address. So 30 minutes after the medal arriving in today's post I was talking to Ron's sister.
When looking through the memorial notices for Ron one of the last I came across was from Ron's fiancée, Clare. After Ron was killed, Edna stayed in touch with Clare for many years. Clare subsequently married and had four children.
The returned medal tally is now 1188.

Douglas Welsh - 1914 Trio and 2 MID

In October 2010 I posted a story about the NSW RSL box. We have progressively worked our way through it and there is only a small proportion of the original 181 medals left to return. Every so often Bill and I go back over those remaining and see if there is any new information available.
One of the groups that surprised me when the box arrived was a WWI trio comprising of the 1914 Star (rather than the 1914-15 Star), the Victory Medal, the British War Medal and two Mentioned in Dispatches (MID) emblems. I quickly established that the medals were awarded to 2326 PTE Douglas Welsh who initially served with the Royal Highlanders before transferring to the Machine Gun Corps (number 22173). Through some research assistance from the British Medal Forum we located the London Gazette entires for both MID. I was also pointed towards Douglas' pension papers which were available on Ancestry. The pension papers gave me Douglas' father's name and his address in 1919.
An internet search threw up a rather interesting piece of information about this family. Around 1910 a meteorite fragment landed on the farm where Douglas and his parents lived. The impact was witnessed by his mother. The story is at this link. Even more interesting is a photo of Mrs Welsh looking at the impact site.

Source: http://www.meteoritehistory.info/UKIRELAND/STR9.JPG

I then ran in to the usual brick walls. That was until last Tuesday when Bill sent me an email asking what information I had on Douglas. I did a quick check of Ancestry and stumbled across a very comprehensive  family tree with the whole family. Douglas had seven siblings including Thomas who was killed in action on 5 November 1914. All this information has been added since I first looked in to Douglas so it pays to revisit our research every now and then.
This is a photo of Thomas.

These are Douglas' medals, a photo of him as a school boy and then later in life with some family members.

Thank you to Moira for allowing me to use the family photos and as mentioned these medals came to me from the NSW RSL.The returned medal tally is now 1161.

Post update - 7 Jul 12
Today I received another wonderful photo from Moira of three of the eight Welsh children. This shows, from the left - Douglas, David and Patrick.

Charles Hewland

Here is Bill's story about a return he has just completed: 

‘I have for some time thought of asking Glyn to include a new heading on our Blog: From the biscuit tin.

Whose biscuit tin is another story, mums, dads, granma's, grandad’s? The name changes but the contents; birth certificates, marriage certificates, cuff links, old watches, badges and of course medals, never does.

It is from such a tin that the search for the next of kin of VP7483 Major Charles James Hewland comes.

From Margaret, the daughter of the tin's owner, now deceased, we learned that the medals had been in the family for close on 35 years. The one thing that was certain is that there was no Charles Hewland in the family.

After a search that took a number of strange turns and with the co-operation of two real estate agents, one in South Australia and the other in Queensland, we were able to finally return the medals to James' granddaughter Sarah.

What is still to be answered is how the medals got into the tin and the whereabouts of the WW1 medals awarded to 117A SergeantCharles James Hewland and the attendant MID.’

Hewland's service number is a little unusual with the VP prefix. This is the first one that we have come across. The VP indicates that Hewland was a member of the permanent military from Victoria rather than the 2nd AIF. The returned medal tally is now 1108.