Chris McDaniel with John Lawless and the medals he found at Tungamah tip almost 40 years ago.
A chance discovery at the Tungamah tip almost four decades ago has culminated in an emotional reunion, with Yarrawonga’s John Lawless returning Corporal Charles Edward Bell’s WWI medals to a family member.
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John found an old fob-watch case among rubbish at the tip in the late 1980s and thinking it might contain a watch, he picked it up and opened it while driving home.
Instead, the case held military medals and identity tags stamped with the name C. E. Bell.
“I put them in a drawer and basically forgot about them,” John said.
“I always thought I would give them to the RSL to put on display.”
Now 78, John decided it was time to find the medals a permanent home and approached Mulwala RSL director Paul Nieuwenhout, who searched the National Archives of Australia and uncovered Charles Bell’s remarkable story.
Born at Mansfield in 1894, Charles enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force alongside his younger brother William on August 22, 1914.
He served with the 4th Light Horse Regiment, rose to the rank of corporal and served at Gallipoli and in France.
Corporal Bell was wounded and gassed in France in December 1917 and treated in France and England before returning to Australia in September 1918.
After the war, he worked at a Tungamah sawmill.
His first wife, Irene, died in 1930 and he later married Mary Florence Mulquiney from Tungamah.
Following Charles’s death at the Caulfield Repatriation Hospital in 1939, Mary married Harry McDaniel and had a son, Chris.
With help from the Mulquiney family network, Mr Nieuwenhout traced Chris to Bendigo.
Chris knew his mother had been married to Charles but had never heard about the missing medals.
Chris will proudly wear Corporal Charles Bell’s medals on Anzac and Remembrance Day along with his own medal from the Vietnam War.
The first indication came through an unexpected telephone call to the office of Chris’s retirement village, asking whether his mother had been married to Charles Bell.
Chris, himself a Vietnam veteran, became deeply invested in uncovering the history and travelled from Bendigo to Yarrawonga last week where John formally presented him with the long-lost medals.
“It is hard to describe how I feel; I am very proud to accept them,” Chris said.
Chris plans to have the medals restored and placed in a display case and hopes to honour Charles by wearing the medals alongside his own on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.
They will eventually pass to Chris’s son, ensuring they remain safely within the family.
John said the medals could easily have remained buried beneath the former tip forever.
He urged families to preserve wartime medals by passing them to relatives or donating them to an RSL.
“There was a bit of fate in it; hopefully Charles Edward Bell’s memory now lives on,” John said.
“It is history; they were fought for, and their memory should not be allowed to die.”
