Family of Welsh WW1 soldier thrilled by ID tag find

The battered, homemade disc provided enough information for Simon Hobson to track down its owner

The family of a World War One soldier whose identity disc was found by a detectorist in a Suffolk field said they were "thrilled" to have it back.

Simon Hobson found William Thomas's disc near Henley last December.

His research helped him trace Mr Thomas's great nieces Jackie Barrett and Yvonne Pillinger in Wales and reunite them with the disc.

"It's fascinating, it was completely out of the blue, I couldn't have imagined it," Mrs Barrett said.

The family believed all of Mr Thomas's personal items had been returned to his sister Lena following his death in 1915 during the Gallipoli campaign.

Mr Thomas, from Cardiff, was a private in Royal Army Medical Corps who died "of his wounds" aged 22

Mr Hobson, 54, who works for a local housing authority and lives in Ipswich, met the family and returned the tag, which he had framed for them, on Monday.

Yvonne Pillinger and Jackie Barrett with the framed identity disc

Mrs Barrett, who lives in Caerphilly, said when she first got a message from Mr Hobson she thought it was a scam, ignoring it until her daughter also got a message.

"I must admit it was so out of the blue I assumed it was a scam," she said. "Everything these days seem to be, [so] you can't help but feel a little bit like it can't be a real story but my daughter was contacted too... then it seemed like there was a little more to it.

"It was a big surprise obviously," she said.

Mrs Barrett says she did not know much about Mr Thomas apart from that he died young and was, according to family legend, her grandmother Lena's favourite brother.

The tag belonged to William Thomas, who like many World War One soldiers, appeared to have created his own metal dog tag in addition to his Army-issue asbestos fibre disc

Research by Mr Hobson and members of the MOD War Detectives Facebook site found Mr Thomas had a sweetheart called Grace, from Cambridge, who was a music teacher at the local village school in Henley.

However, they believed that all his personal items had been returned to Lena and are still mystified about how the tag made its way to Suffolk.

Mrs Barrett believes Mr Thomas either left the tag with Grace before heading to Turkey, or her grandmother knew about Grace and sent her a keepsake after his death.

One of his Facebook contacts sent him this photo, including William Thomas (third right) eating ice cream in Cardiff

She added the family were also "thrilled for Simon", who had found the disc in a field he had been searching for the last three years, with the land owner's permission.

It had also been a "nice history lesson" for the family as "you don't come across this in everyday life", Mrs Barrett said.

"It [the disc] has done a bit of a tour itself, it's fantastic how now there are the means [through which] this can actually happen."

Mr Hobson said "it was amazing" and "very emotional" to meet and connect with Mr Thomas's family.

"It was only right and proper to get it back to the family. I don't think I'll ever find anything quite like that ever again, it's a one-off," he said.

"I almost feel it was in my destiny to find it," he added.

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