WW1 medals to the DURMAN brothers from Reading, one Gassed and D.O.W the other survived.

Simply amazing to have survived intact and in such a condition, luckily one brothers service records survived, it also appears that the house they grew up in still stands.

Two brothers from 5 Brighton Road, Earley, Reading. Both went to France. Only one came home.

Thomas Durman was among the early volunteers. He enlisted in the Army Service Corps as SS/16369, the SS prefix marking him as a "Supply Special", a man taken on for a particular trade within the supply branch. He landed in France on 24 September 1915, earning the 1914-15 Star, and spent the war keeping the army fed and supplied. He later transferred to the Labour Corps and was demobilised to Class Z reserve on 15 February 1919. His trio came to him through the Labour Corps Record Office at Nottingham, the Star posted in September 1920.

His younger brother William Charles Durman was born in Earley around 1895 and worked as a billiard marker before the war. He enlisted at Market Harborough on 25 October 1915, aged 20, standing 5 feet 9 and a half inches. He became Gunner 61897, Royal Garrison Artillery, and joined at Dover three days later. He served with 146th Heavy Battery, the 3rd Hull Heavy Battery, raised in Hull in 1915 and in France from June 1916, manning 60-pounder guns.

In spring 1918 the Germans launched their great offensive against the British line. William was caught by a gas shell. He was evacuated to 24 General Hospital at Etaples on the coast, where Vera Brittain was nursing gas casualties at that very time. He died of his wounds on 1 April 1918, aged about 22.

In June 1918 his mother Eliza signed for his personal effects: letters, photos, a pipe, a pocket book, two coins, a mirror, a purse, a rosary and small crucifix, a notebook wallet, a tobacco pouch, three Christmas cards, a metal watch, two knives, a safety razor, an electric torch and a match box holder.

In August 1921 the RGA Record Office at Dover sent her his British War and Victory Medals, "which would have been conferred upon" him "had he lived".

What makes this group exceptional is how much has survived with it. Eliza kept everything exactly as it arrived: the registered On His Majesty's Service envelopes addressed to her at Brighton Road, the original boxes with their typed labels, and the Dover forwarding letter itself. Thomas did the same with his own medals. His trio came with its forwarding slips, boxes and registered envelopes, and he never wore them. The medals have never been mounted and remain in mint condition, just as they left the Record Office over a century ago.

Paperwork like this is usually the first thing to be lost or thrown away. To find it complete, crisp and still with the medals it came with, for both brothers, after more than 100 years, is very rare. This group keeps the two Durman brothers together: five medals, their original boxes, registered envelopes and forwarding letters, all from the same house in Earley.