Hero’s medal lost ago on moor retur
A HERO’s medal from the First World War has turned up more than 40 years after it went missing on a moor – at the home of a neighbour of his family.
The service medal was awarded to Private Ennie Clarke, who was just 19 when he was killed by a shell blast while fighting on the frontline in Thiepval, France, in 1917.
It was the pride and joy of his relatives but somehow vanished from their home in Skipton, North Yorks, during the 1970s.
After years of trying to find it, Ennie’s great niece made a Facebook community
Brothers
page appeal this autumn.
And a neighbour living just yards away revealed he had found it as a 10-year-old boy while playing on the moors with friends.
Carol Ayrton, from Skipton, was stunned when Kirk Humphreys, who lives a short walk from her front door, told her.
She said: “He asked me for Ennie’s service number and when I answered 4777 he messaged back and said ‘It’s coming home. It’s Ennie’s medal’.
“It was really emotional collecting it from Kirk and holding something that had been given to the family for Ennie’s part in the war and which could have been lost forever had it not been for a little boy finding it.
“How on earth it got there in the first place, no one knows.
“Perhaps one of his sisters or brothers took it up there to show their friends