WW1 medal found near park on VE Day anniversary reunited with family

Dale Moxon's grandmother was Pte Harold Varley's sister

A medal awarded to a World War One soldier has been reunited with his family after it was found near a park on the anniversary of VE Day.

Metal detectorists Dean McLaughlin and his friend Jack Donoghue found the medal, belonging to Pte Harold Varley, in Idle, near Bradford, on 8 May.

Pte Varley's great nephew, Dale Moxon, responded to an appeal the pair put out on Facebook to trace his descendants.

Mr Moxon, 62, from Pontefract, said he "felt emotional" receiving the medal.

"It brought a tear to my eye," he said.

The medal was found by friends Dean McLaughlin and Jack Donoghue in a woodland near a park in Idle, West Yorkshire

Mr McLaughlin, 26, from Idle, said he was trying out his friend's metal detector for the first time, while out exercising, and was "very surprised" to stumble across the find.

"I felt like we found treasure," he said.

"We wasn't sure what it was at first."

Mr Donoghue, 27, said: "We even got pulled up by the police shortly after and even they didn't know what it was."

After further inspection the pair, who are in lockdown together, found Pte Varley's name and regiment number on the medal before researching into the soldier.

Pte Varley was in the Prince of Wales Own 10th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment

Pte Varley died aged 21 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in France on 1 July 1916.

His medal was subsequently "passed around family members", Mr Moxon said.

It is unclear how the medal was lost but the 62-year-old believes children in the family "may have taken it out to play with it" 50 years ago and "it's been buried there ever since".

Mr Moxon, whose grandmother was Pte Varley's sister, said: "We knew he'd been killed in service. I remember reading his letters that he wrote to my gran."

"I'm going up to my gran's grave. I felt that's the first place I should take it [the medal]."