Medal mystery at Russell

The Russell RSA will commemorate Armistice Day once again on Monday, but this time much of the focus will be on the mystery of three WW1 medals.

The two service medals and Military Cross with two bars were found amongst other medals at the RSA, with nothing to indicate who had won them. Both service medals had had the recipient's name scratched off. So began an extraordinary effort by former President Peter Roberts and his wife Barbara, who left no stone unturned to solve the mystery.

They achieved that, to a degree, although one big question remains.

Inquiries at the Imperial War Museum in London established that only a handful of WW1 soldiers, none of them New Zealanders, had won the Military Cross with two bars. Forensic examination subsequently yielded the name Alfred Youdale, an Australian who was invalided home from Gallipoli in 1915 as a result of illness, believed to be yellow fever.

He returned to Egypt, hoping to continue the fight against the Turks. While there he learnt to fly in just two weeks and six hours. He duly joined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in Egypt, where a pilot's average life expectancy at that time was measured in minutes.

He was awarded the Military Cross and the two bars on three separate occasions in 1917, the last being awarded shortly before he was shot down and killed on December 23, 1917. Youdale himself never saw the medals, which were presented to his mother some time after the war.

After more research Peter and Barbara decided to track down the family. They wrote to four families close to the Sydney suburb of Ashfield, where Alfred Youdale came from, and received a response from a great nephew. The family had thought the medals were in the Imperial War Museum in London.

The most likely scenario was that the medals had been pawned or stolen at some stage, but no one had any idea how they crossed the Tasman. Youdale and his family had (and have) no connection with New Zealand, let alone Russell.

The legal situation appears to be that the medals, given that they were never reported stolen, are the RSA's to own, but they have been gifted to the New Zealand Medals Collection Trust, which has undertaken to lend them to the Russell RSA for permanent display. They will now play a major role in Monday's Armistice Day commemoration.

Four members of the Youdale family are expected to travel from Australia to see the medals' unveiling and blessing, and to accept a set of replicas. The Australian and British governments are also expected to be represented, along with the RNZAF.