The First World War Victory Medal of Major Bertram Lawrence HERDON has been returned after being missing for nearly 100 years, just in time for the Centenary of Remembrance Day. The medal return took place at the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney Australia …. a long way from where Bertram served during the Great War.
Victory Medal awarded to then Lieutenant Bertram Lawrence HERDON who served with the Indian Army during the Great War. This medal was returned to his descendants nearly 100 years after the Great War ended.
Major Bertram HERDON served with the Indian Army during the First World War. At this time, Bertram was a Lieutenant and his service on the Indian frontier meant that he was spared from the carnage that was the Western Front.
This Victory Medal was found during 2016 by a British medal collector Angus McLeod who was travelling through Krakow in Poland and saw the award pinned to a French uniform. Knowing that the medal did not historically relate to that particular uniform, he managed through broken German to convince the shop owner to sell the medal separately. When Angus returned to his home in Spain and began to research the medal recipient, he located details about Bertram Lawrence HERDON on the genealogy website Ancestry.com and made contact. The wonderful staff at Ancestry Australia made contact with Medals Gone Missing and this medal return then became a real international affair.
David HERDON of Australia is the great nephew of Bertram HERDON and Medals Gone Missing tracked him down using Ancestry’s resources; and the rest is history. The medal was returned by Ancestry’s Jason Reeve at the ANZAC Memorial in Sydney, just in time for the Centenary of Remembrance Day.
Many thanks go out to Ancestry.com for this amazing piece of community service which proves they are not just into genealogy for the commercial interests. As usual, Medals Gone Missing researcher extraordinaire Sandra Smith went above and beyond the call of duty to facilitate his medal return.
