War Medals

[Mummyh2016]

Couldn't find the best place to post this, hopefully I've chose the right topic!
Last year my parents cleared out my nans house after she went into a care home. My dad today was going through the packed items in the garage and has come across 2 war medals from WW1. He vaguely remembers as a young boy one of their neighbours was a little old man, who my nan used to take meals to everyday. He remembers my Nan having these war medals off this man. Whether it was for safe keeping or for her to keep permanently we don't know - she has dementia so we are unable to ask her. The man died approx 50 years ago. We would like to try and find the mans family in order to return the medals. On the side of the medals it has his name, regiment and a 5 digit number, I'm presuming was his army number.
Does anyone have any idea on how to even start on this or am I asking the impossible?

As you have his name and address (presumably if he was your Nan's neighbour) why not ask the local paper to write an article? And use social media?
Hopefully someone may have information on his family.

Contact SSAFA (veteran's charity), they'll know which part of the army to contact. The number on the side of the medals is his number, and will mean his records can be found. It's not a number anyone who has served will forget either.

Regimental number, last name would be enough to find which regiment he served with and therefore his regimental association (DP is ex army and just got up so I asked him )

The site is the archives.gov.uk

Argh that link doesn't work. It's nationalarchives.gov.uk

Drop an email to the MOD medals team and they should be able to help

But if the gentleman died 50 years ago surely the army etc won't be able to help? OP need to trace the family not the recipient.

But the records of him, family name, addresses etc means it's possible to trade the family. I found my original birth certificate and the birth certificates of my biological mother, and her mother and father with only my name, date of birth and hospital.
It's a long shot, but possible. Army would also have details of next of kin who would make tracing descendents easier.

The military love their history to them it's only 50 years.

WW1 records are quite detailed, usually they include parents names, so may be able to trace that way.
Your library will probably have access to ancestry or findmypast, or you can pm the details to me and I'll see if I can find anything for you.

If it's a fairly unusual surname, you could also try googling "[surname] family history" to see if anyone is researching that family, they might help.

Good luck