War medals stolen from the mail

Jonathan Riley

DIGBY COURIER

NovaNewsNow.com

Russell Farrell thought his war medals would be safer with his daughter Judy.

The two Purple Hearts and a Gold Star, his Asiatic-Pacific medal, American Campaign medal, Rifle and Pistol medal and his Good Conduct medal were all mounted on a framed velvet square that used to hang in his bedroom.

He packed the display in a box with some photos from the war and mailed it to California on Monday, Feb. 12.

On the outside of the box he wrote “medals and pictures” and insured the box for $50.

“I made a mistaking do that, I just wanted someone in the family to have them,” says Russell.

The box made it, but the medals didn’t. The postman that delivered the box to Judy’s house in Camarillo on Friday, Feb. 23 mentioned to her the side of the box looked damaged.

When she opened it up the missing medals were obvious – the framed velvet backing faded around the dark outline where the medals used to lay.

“I was so sad I even wept,” said the retired university professor by phone from California. “Part of my Dad has been ripped off.

“He fought in the bloodiest battles of World War II – why would anyone do this to him?”

Russell, an American, is 86 and lives by himself on the Digby waterfront since his wife Alice (Anderson) died last year. He has lived in Nova Scotia since the couple moved back to her birthplace, Parker’s Cove, in 1974.

He fought as a U.S. Marine in Guadalcanal, Guam and Iwo Jima. He was wounded three times. The first two times he was awarded a Purple Heart and the third time they gave him a Gold Star.

Judy has been trying to talk to the postal worker who delivered the box but she thinks he is on vacation.

As she understands it, any investigation into the theft has to start at the Digby end, so she has photographed the frame where the medals used to be.

Purple Hearts sell on EBay for between $40 US and $20 US.

The same day Judy noticed her father’s medals missing, Percy Fenton’s Victory medal sold for $7,435 on EBay. Victory medals normally sell for under $15.

Fenton, originally from Arcadia near Yarmouth, fought with the No. 2 Construction Battalion, Canada’s only Black Battalion in the First World War.

New Democrat MP Peter Stoffer represents Sackville – Eastern Shore and is the NDP’s veteran affairs critic. He introduced a private member’s bill last year to restrict the sale of medals and on Friday, Feb. 23 he told Parliament again that medals should not be for sale.

“It is despicable that in this great country somebody would try to financially profit from the valour of other people.

“Those medals that they (veterans) wear so proudly on their chests are not currency. They represent so much more: valour, honour, duty and sacrifice, and remembrance of those who never had a chance to wear theirs.”

Judy says her father will be able to have the medals reissued but it won’t be the same and it isn’t the point.

“I feel very sorry for the low person that did this.”

Russell says he isn’t too upset.

“I had them for 60 years so I was ready for someone else to have them. I thought that someone else would be my daughter though.”

jriley@digbycourier.ca