LOST WWI MEDAL FOUND IN SEWER RETURNED TO OWNERS

The family of a soldier killed in the First World War have been reunited with his Victory medal - after it turned up in a sewer.

Private Charles William Curtin was killed at Ypres in May 1915, aged just 35, and the posthumous award for his bravery in France was all his young family had left of him. But the bronze campaign medal went missing and was not seen for more than 70 years.

Now the heirloom has been returned to Pte Curtin's grandchildren John Hodgson and Dorothy Heed, after it was found in a Manchester sewer by a labourer.

The worker's sister-in-law, retired accountant Christine Wolstenholme, spent three years tracking down the family so she could return the treasure to its rightful home.

The 66-year-old's achievement is all the more impressive because the medal had been engraved with a slightly wrong name.

Mr Hodgson, from Poulton, near Blackpool said: 'The phone rang one day and this lady asked if I was John Hodgson and did I have relatives in Chorlton called Curtin.

'She said a family member of hers had been working in sewers in Manchester and had found a medal and she'd spent some years since trying to track the rightful owners down.

'I was quite amazed really. Especially as my cousin Anne had tried to trace where the medal had gone once. The fact she spent all this time doing the research for strangers is just amazing.'

To read the complete article, see: Missing First World War medal which was found dumped in a SEWER is returned to fallen soldier's family after 70 years (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271184/Missing-First-World-War-medal
-dumped-SEWER-given-fallen-soldiers-family.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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