Poole family stunned when medals awarded to youngest WW1 soldier found in Australia

• Report by ITV News Meridian's Sally Simmonds into how the wartime medals of a British WW1 soldier made it around the world all the way to Australia

Wartime medals belonging to the youngest soldier to sign up for the British Army have been returned to his family in Poole, having been found in Australia.

Sidney Lewis signed up for the British Army aged just 12 - and just a year later he fought in the Battle of Somme.

He was awarded a Victory medal, a Battle of the Somme medal and the General Army medal but the trophies had been lost over the following years.

His family, from Poole, was left stunned when a woman called to say she had found his medals in a small shop in Western Australia.

Private Sidney Lewis's son Colin says he was amazed when, more than a century after the Great War, he got the call saying his father's medals had been discovered.

A woman called Marita Gray had been looking at World War One articles and found the inscribed honours in a shop.

She contacted the Imperial War Museum in London and they put her in touch with the family.

Colin Lewis said the family thought it was a con when the call first came from the other side of the world.

The medals have since been returned to the family.

Sidney Lewis fought at the battle of Delville Wood in 1916, aged 13, where 80% of the Allied soldiers were either wounded, missing or killed.

When he left the army, he married, joined the police, and then ran a pub in Frant near Tunbridge Wells before retiring to Hailsham in East Sussex.

It remains a mystery as to how the medals ended up in Australia.

Colin said his father never spoke about the war and did not reveal that he had received the awards.

He added his father should never have been allowed to sign up.

He said: "I think it was disgusting really, that he should be dragged into it at that age, it's bad enough anybody going to war, but young children going age of 13, there should have been a check of some system."

Colin added: "He mentioned he'd been in the first world war but I didn't believe him, I thought, 13 no he must be exaggerating.

"I feel guilty about not asking him really now because he was really was a hero."

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