Medal re-united!

[dannyhill86]

Hi Pals,

I just thought I'd share a rather happy re-union with anyone that is interested. It's the story of a WW1 service medal found in a loft recently which was returned to the recipient's very proud and gratfeul elderly daughter living on the other side of the world. I had a small part in finding living relatives so I'm particulalry proud. Of course, the credit should go to the man who found it and returned it for no other reason than to return a hard earned medal to its rightful owners.

Hopefully you enjoy it, heres the article in the 'Western Australian' newspaper:

Dan

Medal tells an amazing tale

Joseph Catanzaro, The West Australian Updated December 10, 2011, 3:48 am Years after Archibald George Saunders died and when his family were preparing to sell his home in the English countryside, they found something curious amid the clutter in the old soldier's loft.

Secreted in a box was a World War I service medal belonging to a man the family had never heard of. Intrigued, Mr Saunders' son-in-law, insurance salesman John Gardner, 58, decided to research the medal's history.

Armed with just one clue, a piece of cardboard which bore the name F.B. Goude, Mr Gardner began to delve into archives from the world wars. He found a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, newspaper clippings in Singapore and a death notice in Australia.

Over time, like a golem made from sheaves of old papers, the man who once owned the medal came to life for Mr Gardner.

Frank Benjamin Goude was, Mr Gardner discovered, an English engineer who fought on the battlefields of WWI.

"After a while, I felt as if I knew Frank Goude," Mr Gardner said. "The search got very personal. I wanted to return the medal to its rightful owner."

A year after the search began, the paper trail ended in WA.

Yesterday, The Weekend West helped Mr Gardner locate Mr Goude's last surviving daughter, 87-year-old Willetton retiree Joyce Clamp.

Her recollections helped piece together a fragmented picture of a friendship forged in adversity.

After WWI, Mr Goude moved to Singapore with his wife and two daughters where they lived until the Japanese invaded in 1942. His wife and children escaped to Fremantle but Mr Goude, a captain in the Singapore Straits Volunteer Force, was captured and sent first to Changi jail and then to Thailand, where he was put to work on the infamous Thailand-Burma railway.

There in the jungle amid depravity and death, he is believed to have met the man he gave his medal to.

Mr Saunders, a British soldier, was captured in Singapore and also sent to the Death Railway.

He was known to have been gravely ill while a prisoner in Camp Four. Mr Goude, also a PoW there, had helped craft makeshift surgical equipment in the camp hospital and both men were engineers put to work by the Japanese. Mrs Clamp and Mr Gardner are convinced it was at one of these common intersections that the pair met.

Eventually settling in Perth, Mr Goude never spoke much about his ordeal. But Mrs Clamp said the small things he mentioned before he died in 1974 now had new significance.

"Dad always told me you had to have a mate to survive over there," she said. "Perhaps they did some great kindness for one another. For Dad to give away his medal, it must have been something very special."

"If only this medal could talk," Mrs Clamp said, "I think it would tell us a wonderful story."

[ianw]

A great good news story - so appropriate that the medal has made its way home.

[pioneecorps]

Hi Dan

A very moving story of a soldier medal, that was returned to his famliy, thank you for sharing it with us.

Regards.

Gerwyn

[azureus]

Well done , must feel good to be part of it , shame theres not more reunites

Dave