A broken group brought back together

This is a pretty complicated story and a testament to Bill’s patience. The end result is that four medals were actually lost to the veteran’s son but Bill’s advice bought a broken group back together. To top it off, Bill was able to arrange for the issue of three other medals that had not been awarded. The following is Bill journey through this search. The returned medal tally is now 1356.

We’ve lost Dad’s medals, well some of them, can you help us find them?

This is a question that I get asked almost monthly, and try as I might, people never seem satisfied, as I know I wouldn’t to be told, that they are asking an almost impossibility.

Had David not been a family friend and an ex-serviceman, with an understanding of where we were going and how difficult the journey would be, I do not think that I would have even begun to think that together, we could do anything. Nor be as successful as we have been.

The first part was simple: what medals did David and his mother have?

• 1939-1945 Star, but not engraved
• Pacific Star
• 1939-45 War Medal, and
• 1939-1945 Australian Service Medal

The next question: did David or his family, have any of his father’s discharge papers?

Fortunately, David’s father had been very careful to keep all his documents.

It was from these that we learned he was eligible for:

• 1939-1945 Star
  Pacific Star
• War Medal 1939-45
• Australian Service Medal 1939-45
• Australian Active Service Medal 1945-75 Clasp Vietnam
• Vietnam Medal
• Defence Force Service Medal with 1/2and 3^rd Clasp
• National Medal with 1^st Clasp
• Australian Defence Medal
• Meritorious Service Medal
• Long Service and Good Conduct Medal
• Vietnamese Campaign Medal, as well as the,
• Emblem of the US Meritorious Unit Commendation,
• Emblem of the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm

So where were they?

The first question was: did his father ever get the medals in the first place? On Dave’s behalf, but with his details and signature on the form, I submitted an application for the posthumous issue of any medals his father had failed to claim.

After quite some time an excited David contacted me to tell me that he had just received his father’s: 

• AASM 1945-75, with Clasp Vietnam,
• Defence Force Service Medal with 1/2and 3^rd Clasp, and the
• Australian Defence Medal

So that now reduced the total missing to five.

Now came the part that I refuse to enter into, and I will leave it to your own imagination as to why. Having put together a family tree and related timeline, I wrote a series of questions for Dave to ask individual members of his family. Over quite some time this research slowly bought to light the missing: 

• National Medal with 1^st Clasp
• Meritorious Service Medal
• Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, and the
• Vietnam Medal 

However, the following still eluded us both:

• Vietnamese Campaign Medal,
• The Emblem of the US Meritorious Unit Commendation,
• The Emblem of the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation with Palm

To complete the set, Dave followed my advice to purchase a replica of the missing Vietnamese Campaign Medal, and mount it with the others. That by doing so there was less chance that the medals would again be split up, as there was no guarantee that we could ever pull the set back together.

So how did the medals all look, see for yourself.

Would I do it again? I know Dave would in an instant say yes. Me, I don’t know.