Returned in time for Poppy Day
First World War hero’s stolen watch lay in a field for years
WHEN thieves stole a watch awarded to a soldier for bravery in the First World War, his devastated family resigned themselves to never seeing it again.
But eight years later, and just days before Remembrance Day, they have been reunited with the precious honour – after a dog found it in a field.
Sergeant Walwyn Oram, known as Jack, was given the watch by the residents of Radstock in Somerset for his gallantry during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.
After he died in 1970 it passed down to his proud family, who cherished it.
So they were heartbroken when burglars broke into a family home in Dursley, Gloucestershire, and stole the engraved heirloom.
Years of searching proved fruitless, and Sergeant Oram’s daughter, Nancy Dyer, and granddaughter, Elizabeth Spyvee, were certain it was gone for good. Mrs
Spyvee said: ‘ My parents’ house was burgled in 2011.
‘They took mum’s jewellery and my grandfather’s watch.
‘We searched high and low. I contacted various newspapers, we did leaflet drops and contacted pawn shops. We searched endlessly.’
Years passed and the watch had become a memory when two weeks ago, while surfing the internet, a stunned Mrs Spyvee saw it in a post left by a woman whose dog, Mickey, had picked it up in a field a year before.
The watch had apparently been discarded when the thieves realised it could be identified by the engraving on the back and it was too risky to sell on.
Mrs Spyvee, 52, said: ‘I was flicking through Facebook – and there it was. A woman posted that she had been out walking a year ago and her dog, Mickey, had had it in his its mouth.
‘She had then contacted various museums but had no luck so ran out of ideas and put it away.’
However, when Cherilyn Morgan saw a post on Facebook from a man who was looking for the owner of a ring he had dug up, it gave her the idea of putting out an online appeal about the watch.
Within hours, she had been contacted by Mrs Spyvee, who said yesterday: ‘It’s amazing. All our Christmases have come together. The watch is priceless to us.
‘It’s got pride of place in my mum’s house again now – but we’re probably going to invest in a safe!’ Sergeant Oram was born in 1893 and signed up to fight in The Great War even though, as a farmer, he was exempt.
He received the Military Medal for gallantry under fire, and was awarded the watch after the war for his valour at Passchendaele in Belgium. He had taken on a machine gun post and then stayed behind enemy lines with injured comrades. Sergeant Oram was wounded later in the war and was treated in hospital in Leeds.
Mrs Dyer, 82, said: ‘To get the watch back is the pinnacle of our happiness. What Cherilyn did was amazing. It’s like a miracle that she found it – and found us.’
War grave detectives: Pages 38-39