A FORMER RAF serviceman has been reunited with his war medals following more than a week of anguish since they went missing.

Donald Nicholson, a flight engineer who helped the crews of RAF Bomber Command to get off the ground during the Second World War, had feared the medals he won for his wartime service may have been lost forever.

The 92-year-old veteran from Houghton-le-Spring, on Wearside, was traumatised when he could not find the five service medals on arrival at the site of the new Bomber Command Memorial, in Lincoln, earlier this month.

He was picked up by taxi and taken, free-of-charge, to Lincoln having been invited for the opening ceremony of the memorial, as one of the few survivors of wartime days.

Mr Nicholson believed he had dropped the medals on arriving for the unveiling, in Lincoln, on Friday, October 2.

It meant he was unable to wear them during the ceremony and he returned home to the North-East in the belief they were lying somewhere on, or near to the memorial site.

Metal detector enthusiasts and volunteers turned out in force to scour the site, all to no avail.

But the medals were found closer to home, on Houghton’s Dairy Lane estate by a dog walker as searchers.

Mr Nicholson’s hopes of collecting them on Saturday (October 10) were dashed, as the lost and found property office at Houghton-le-Spring Police Station was closed. It subsequently emerged they had been taken to the Southwick Police Station.

Speaking after he was reunited after his medals on Monday morning, he said: "I am over the moon. It was a traumatic experience having lost them. Getting them back is like winning the lottery.

“I thought they had been lost forever. I thought they had been picked up by somebody who thought they might be able to make a few bob selling them.

"They were found by a gentleman who was walking his dog. He found them in the gutter beside where I was picked up in the car.

“Apparently they were found on the morning I left to go to Lincoln, in the gutter, just a few yards from my house."

Mr Nicholson said he was delighted to have his medals back in time to take part in the the Houghton-le-Spring Remembrance Day service.

He said: “I have been invited to lay the wreath for the last two years running and I think I will be the only one visiting the Royal British Legion Club who is a World War Two veteran.”