RAF hero’s lost medals found in his own cellar
AN RAF ace’s medals, missing for 30 years, have been uncovered in his own cellar – after workmen cracked a safe they found there.
Air Vice-Marshal Francis ‘Togs’ Mellersh won the prestigious Distinguished Flying Cross twice during the Second World War.
He destroyed eight enemy planes and saved countless lives by shooting down 38 V-1 flying bombs before they could reach London.
He died in 1996 and his wife Elisabeth and their three children assumed his precious medals had been lost for ever.
After Elizabeth died last September, their daughter Fiona Syms put the family home in Newenden, Kent, up for sale.
Although she cleared out her parents’ belongings she left an old safe in the cellar as she thought it was empty and didn’t know the combination.
She was stunned when the new owner called her two weeks after the sale to say that workmen had drilled into the safe and found the medals.
He gave them back to Fiona who has reunited them with her father’s RAF logbook, which contains the signature of legendary pilot Guy Gibson.
“I was very emotional to see them again,” said Fiona. “My father left me his logbook which is incredibly precious to me and goes with me everywhere. So to reunite his medals with it means an awful lot.”