THE family of a Walla Walla soldier will be reunited with their father's military medal after a six-month-long quest to track them down was finally brought to a head last week.
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In December, Ganmain man Darren Blake found a 15-carat gold medallion while medal detecting in Walla Walla, about 40 kilometres north of Albury.
The medal had the inscription "W.T. Stewart" which Mr Blake used as the starting point for his fact-finding mission.
With the help of a historian, and military records, the man could be identified as William Stewart - a WWI veteran who served in France.
Mr Stewart has three living sons, two of them residing in Canberra.
"It was a very long search," Mr Blake said.
"It sent shivers up my spine when we found them."
Service records, including original registration documents, were sourced from the Australian War Memorial to determine who was in Mr Stewart's family and to pinpoint their current location.
There was a lot of "dead ends", but methods like sifting through voting records proved successful in locating Mr Stewart's grandson.
Two of Mr Stewart's sons will march at Walla Walla's Anzac Day commemorations, and Mr Blake will march alongside them.
"Anzac Day will be the first time I get to speak to them," Mr Blake said.
"All of the information that I found at the start of the search was relevant to the end result so it will be a big 'wow' factor for me.
"The medal should have been there's all along."
A by-product of Mr Blake's fact-finding mission was discovering that his grandfather was an ex-serviceman.
"I'll be marching for my grandfather who I've never met," he said.
