Op shop returns war hero’s medals
The name engraved on the medals identified the recipient as Warrant Officer Kenneth William Peters.
A Melbourne op shop has reunited a World War II hero’s family with his Distinguished Flying Medal after a five-month search that culminated in an Anzac Day dawn service in South Australia.
Jason Silverstein, who runs the Posh Op Shoppe in Melbourne, discovered a collection of seven medals and recognised their significance after researching them online.
All proceeds from the Posh Op Shoppe support the Jewish Children’s Aid Society, which helps Jewish children with special needs to attend mainstream Jewish schools.
The name engraved on the medals identified the recipient as Warrant Officer Kenneth William Peters, who was a tail gunner on Short Stirling bombers on multiple operations over Germany.
“He flew eight missions in 11 nights, and they had a mortality rate of 50 per cent,” Silverstein said. “Every time they went up he described it as a nightmare.”
Peters’ service record included his own account of how he earned the Distinguished Flying Medal. Rather than accept offers from defence organisations to take the medals, Silverstein was determined to find a family member.
After Ancestry.com and several defence bodies proved fruitless, he contacted an RSL branch near West Terrace Cemetery in South Australia, where Peters is buried.
After five months, the RSL located Peters’ great-niece, Stephanie Gardner.
“He had no children, so it was difficult finding a family member,” Silverstein said.
The local RSL established an inaugural award in Peters’ name, recognising outstanding values of service, courage, respect, integrity and excellence.
At the Anzac Day dawn service in Unley, outside of Adelaide this year, primary school students laid wreaths and the inaugural Kenneth Peters award winner, Ruby Skinner, addressed the gathering on Peters’ remarkable story.
Silverstein and his family travelled to Adelaide for the 4am ceremony.
“I’ve never been to a dawn service before, but it was really something special,” he said.
Gardner attended wearing her great-uncle’s photograph on her lapel. The reunion was filmed by Seven News and broadcast nationally.
How the medals came to be in a Melbourne op shop may never be fully resolved. Silverstein believes Peters had a fiancée in Melbourne before the war, to whom the medals may have passed.
Peters ultimately married a different woman in Adelaide, whom he had met under extraordinary circumstances – he had gone to her door to inform her that her husband had been killed in the war.