By CASEY NEILL
LEO Maybus can wear his grandfather’s World War I medals with pride on the Anzac Day centenary thanks to Dandenong police.
They recovered the Victory Medal and British War Medal 1914-1920 during a raid on a Dandenong North home on 5 February.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get to see these again,” Mr Maybus said last Friday, a tear rolling down his cheek.
“It’s something special and it chokes me up a bit.”
Private Alfred Maybus served Australia with the 22nd Battalion and was captured by the enemy in France in 1917.
He was held in a German prisoner of war camp and repatriated via Dover, England, in December 1918.
“I never knew my grandfather. He died at the age of 42 as the result of mustard gas,” Mr Maybus said.
“I just heard the stories and we had the medals. I just knew that he was a prisoner of war.
“Dad said that he escaped twice and then was interned for the duration of the war.”
Thieves took the medals from Mr Maybus’s bedroom in Ferntree Gully during a raid in 2008.
“I think it’s a low thing to do, very low,” he said.
“They can’t do anything with them, they don’t mean anything to them.”
He has identified a safe place to store the medals and said he would one day pass them onto his son.
“Hopefully he’ll have a son one day and they can get passed down through the family,” he said.
Mr Maybus is looking forward to wearing them on the 100th anniversary of Anzac Day on 25 April.
He thanked Greater Dandenong CIU Detective Senior Constable Jamie Cummings for his efforts to return them.
Sen Const Cummings said someone was charged with the 2008 burglary but the these items were not recovered.
The people who last had them said they’d found them in a park.
“They said they made inquiries with the local papers and police at the time and no one was able to identify them,” he said.
“We haven’t been able to confirm or disprove that.
“It was very satisfying to be able to get them back to the owner.”
