Local man Jeff Oliver began his mission earlier this year after realising one of his great-uncle’s war medals was not his, nor did it belong to someone related to him.

“If I started it maybe 10 years ago I would have been able to ask my grandfather ‘where did you get them from?’, but I just had nothing,” he said.

“All I had to work off was what was on the back of the medal.”

A rigorous search using online tool ancestry.com led Mr Oliver to Simon Crowther, the great-grandson of Private Thomas Scougall, the recipient of the 1914-15 Star.

“It took four days to build the family tree to find where the last link was,” Mr Oliver said. 

Little did he know that Mr Crowther was also in the midst of a search of his own, looking for information about his family’s history, including his great-grandfather’s military career. 

“I knew a little about Thomas, but I wanted to know more,” Mr Crowther said. 

The gentlemen, along with Mr Crowther’s uncle Alan Young, the grandson of Private Scougall, arranged to meet so the medal could be handed back to its rightful owners. 

They met at Elie’s Cafe yesterday morning, where they shared details of each other’s backgrounds over coffee as the medal exchanged hands. 

Mr Young was quite close to his grandfather while he was growing up, but knew little about his experience during the war or how it was possible his medal came to be with those of Mr Oliver’s great-uncle William Henry Way. 

“There were stories he didn’t want to share,” he said. 

“I’m just grateful Simon has gone and done what he has with the family tree.”

And thanks to his efforts, Mr Crowther will have the ultimate reward. 

“This is going to be Simon’s medal,” Mr Young said. “For the work he has done finding this, I think it is only fitting we hand it over to him.” 

Private Scougall’s 1914-15 Star will stay with Mr Crowther until he choses to hand it down to one of his own children, but it will always hold a special place in his heart.

“It is fairly significant because it’s not just my family history, but it is Australian history as well,” he said.