Medals find their way back home

A haul of prestigious war medals that were found in a Napier dump have been reunited locally with the only known descendent of their owner, just days after Nelson Weekly launched an appeal.

The quest for descendants of the Nelsonian Alan Le Grand Campbell, to whom six WW1 and WW2 medals were awarded, eventually lead to the discovery of a living Donald James Campbell. This is despite official RSA records showing him as buried at Marsden Cemetery alongside his father.

Alan’s youngest son is now 91, lives locally and was surprised to hear that he’s been the subject of a nationwide hunt.

“If anyone wanted to find me, they could have just looked in the phonebook,” he says.

However, the search wasn’t quite that simple as keen historian Sue Thomas discovered.

“When I read the story, I thought that as I’ve done a fair bit of genealogy, I’d be able to find Alan’s descendants.”

It was Sue who discovered the RSA records were incorrect after calling the widow of the Donald Campbell who is buried at Marsden Cemetery.

“When she told me her husband’s father was called James and not Alan, I realised the RSA had made a mistake,” she says.

So, Sue set about looking into the wills of the men, scouring electoral rolls and death registers.

Meanwhile, John Cretney from Atawhai, happened to read a copy of the Waimea Weekly while he was in a café.

“I just turned the page and thought, ‘Wow, I know this family, I lived in their house for 30 years.’”

John had moved into Alan’s house on Black Street, Stoke, which the Campbell family owned from 1937 to 1960.

“The house was originally built by John Glasgow and I was interested in the history, so I spoke at length to Alan’s youngest son, whose nickname was Hamish, about his time there.”

He says that after reading the story in the newspaper, he referred back to his notes from 15 years ago and saw that Hamish’s real name was actually Donald James.

When he told Sue, she tracked him down and contacted him by phone.

“When I discovered he was alive and well at the age of 91, I was thrilled.”

Hamish revealed the medals had ended up on a Napier rubbish tip due to a house clearance after his nephew had recently died.

“My brother John left the medals to his son Alexander in his will. Sadly, when Alexander died, we had to arrange a house clearance. The medals must have been thrown out then.”

The next part of the puzzle was reuniting Hamish with his father’s medals.

Veteran Simon Robertson, whose brother Jeremy found the medals on the rubbish tip, had been sent them to kickstart the initial search from his Dunedin home.

“I never expected a relative to be found so soon, let alone one of Alan’s sons who we’d been told had died. As soon as I heard, I took time off work and booked flights to Nelson.”

Being ex-military himself, Simon wanted to hand deliver the medals to Hamish as a mark of respect, so he made the 1130km round trip last week.

“It was an honour to be able to do that for a fellow veteran.”

When Simon handed over the silver box, Hamish immediately recognised the inscription ‘FJE’ 1926, which explained why the medals had been stored inside.

The initials were for the patron for Nelson Repertory, Friday Easther, who was the also director for the Blenheim Amateurs.

Alan’s wife and Hamish’s mother, Barbara, was an actress and Friday was a regular guest at their home when Hamish was a child.

“My father must have been given the box when Friday died. Friday was ex-military too and landed in Gallipoli on his 21st birthday.”

As for the medals, Hamish says his father kept them locked in his desk drawer, rarely to be seen.

“I have a box of my father’s war memorabilia, including flight records, training book and ID card from the Royal Flying Corps, which went on to become the RAF.”

Simon says some of the collection dates back to 1916 and even has logs of flights when Alan was flying in Mesopotamia and Baghdad on operations.

“Hamish literally has a treasure trove of all his father’s war belongings, and it was a real privilege to be able to see it in person. I wasn’t expecting that, so it made the trip even more worthwhile for me.”

Hamish says his father used to tell him tales about his flying days.

“He always said the worst thing about it was the planes. They were made of plywood and the propeller was on the back. You needed to be able to fly it, land it when it broke – there were no parachutes - fix it and then get it back off the ground before you got caught.”

The chance finding of the medals has unearthed a rich family history dating back to 1594. The Campbells come from a long line of British nobility and among them was Hamish’s great grandfather who was one of the earliest settlers in Nelson and opened the first school in Motueka. Mount Campbell is also named after him.