Reuniting families with lost medals

Ian Martyn voluntarily spends hours of time attempting to reunite families with medals awarded to their forbears who were veterans of war through his website medalsreunitednz.co.nz. As told to Adrienne Matthews.

I am the sole surviving descendant of my great grandfather and my passion for this work began with me trying to locate his missing medals. As a veteran myself, I understand the deep significance of medals. For many families, they are the only tangible evidence of their ancestor’s military service and an important link to the past. Although I haven’t yet found my great grandfather’s medals, I have managed to reunite over 550 medals with other families since May 2014.

I am shocked at how many medals have gone missing over time. Sometimes families have sold the medals, lost them, or they have been stolen. Some people don’t realise their significance and many families aren’t even aware that a military veteran ancestor was part of their family.

The job is fascinating but takes endless research. I could not do it without my military service background. You have to know how to read and interpret historic military personnel files and have a good handle on how to research a family’s lineage.

The most extraordinary stories are sometimes revealed through searches, and I write up as many histories as I can for the website. Sometimes the medals come with other military ephemera like photographs, letters, kit bags and the like. I’ll look at anything and everything that might help me identify a soldier, sailor or airman, provided it has a name or service number.

When researching a family, some extraordinary stories can come out about other family members who did incredible things, which is a bonus. Sometimes families are completely unaware of these stories and are as surprised as I am.

Medals turn up in many different places. Sometimes they arrive anonymously. Unfortunately, New Zealand and the United Kingdom did not engrave their World War II medals, which usually makes it impossible to identify the recipients, resulting in thousands being offered for sale.

I encourage people who suspect their forbears may have been awarded medals to do as much research as possible themselves. My priority is always to search for relatives of New Zealand war medals first.

Tracing descendant families has become much harder these days. We’ve moved on from phone books towards online platforms like Facebook, and so much more time is spent scrutinising these for clues. I love what I do. There is tremendous satisfaction in finding a family or descendant and being able to personally hand over a historical treasure. It means their ancestors can be remembered and acknowledged more deeply by future generations.