Medals finally home

Every evening, as the sun sets in Ypres, Belgium, the long drawn-out notes of two bugles signal traffic to come to a stop at the Menin Gate Memorial.

The Last Post honours the 55,000 Commonwealth soldiers killed in the First World War whose only grave is that of the Unknown Soldier.

For nearly 80 years, that sombre ceremony was one of the only tributes to Frank Forsdike, a corporal from the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles killed in June 1916 at the Battle of Mount Sorrel in Belgium.

But next Saturday, thanks to the timely connection of long-lost cousins from opposite sides of the Atlantic, a public ceremony will be held in Berwick to present the unclaimed service medals of Cpl. Forsdike to Florence Layton, his recently found 94-year-old daughter.

"This means so much to Mom," Bert Layton, Florence’s son, said from his Berwick home. "She says it’s been a real blessing that she can celebrate him in such a public way."

Florence was only two years old when her father was killed in action and her mother remarried shortly after the war.

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