But after years of unanswered questions, a chance visit to a website in November led Layton, 59, to a tangible piece of his grandfather's history: three unclaimed war medals, which will be formally presented to Layton's mother Saturday.

"Frank never got to see them himself, you know, it's something that he earned that he never had the opportunity to see," said Layton, whose mother Florence is Forsdike's daughter.

"It's long overdue. They've been there for 88 years."

The retired high school teacher said he felt reminiscent around Remembrance Day and decided to search online for information on Forsdike.

What he found was an online biography, painstakingly compiled in 2006 by Forsdike's great-grandnephew, that details the soldier's life from his August 1878 birth in Leiston, England, to the day he went missing during battle near Ypres, Belgium, in June 1916.

Forsdike, a corporal with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, was fighting in a two-week confrontation known as the Battle for Mount Sorrel when he disappeared.

His body was never found, and his name appears on a memorial at Ypres.

Forsdike's biography, which is found on a website dedicated to the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, includes photographs of the soldier, a uniformed man with a heavy moustache. In another photograph, Forsdike can be seen standing behind his smiling wife and baby daughter Florence.

Through talking with Forsdike's great-grandnephew, who had been searching as far as South Africa for the soldier's relatives, Layton learned of three medals that were issued in 1920, after the war had ended.

By then, Forsdike's wife had remarried and changed her name. Layton said the medals cannot be given posthumously except to the immediate of kin, so they went unclaimed for nearly nine decades.

He said the only person still eligible to receive the medals was his 94-year-old mother, who was a toddler when her father went missing and was unaware of his existence until she was 18.

"In those days, it was considered better not to muddy the waters in terms of who your dad was, and so forth," said Layton, who contacted Veterans Affairs in Ottawa and applied to receive the medals.

"Every Remembrance Day, she was always a little sad, especially when they mentioned the unknown soldier because Frank went missing in action and his body was never found."

About three months after Layton stumbled upon the website, three shiny medals arrived at his home in Berwick: the Bronze Star, awarded to Forsdike for enlisting at the beginning of the war; the British War Medal, awarded to those who saw active duty; and the Canadian Victory Medal, awarded to those in uniform during the war.

Forsdike's great-grandnephew, who lives in Bedford, England, plans to attend the formal presentation ceremony Saturday in Berwick, said Layton.

Capt. Scott Spurr of Canadian Forces Base Greenwood, which has helped organize the ceremony, said Layton's discovery is remarkable, but cases of unclaimed medals are not uncommon.

"Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of other cases where there's a lot of medals sitting up in Ottawa, remaining unclaimed," he said.

"It's a part of our history. Not only a country's history, but also a family's history, too.

"The medals are supposed to be passed along from generation to generation."