A widowed pensioner has spoken of her sadness after her father's war medals were stolen - the day before Remembrance Sunday.

Gill Rowe, 82, was "distraught" when she discovered her late father's three war medals had been snatched on Saturday, November 8.

Mrs Rowe, a Reader at St Mary's Church in Hayes, was out taking some elderly ladies to lunch when the criminals broke into her house in Shoreham Way, Hayes.

However, it was not until the next day - Remembrance Sunday - that she realised the medals were truly gone forever.

When she returned home on Saturday, she said: "I put my key in the lock and I couldn't really open it, I had to fiddle with it and I thought something had happened to the lock."

After going upstairs, she found an old make-up case lying on the floor, but tidied it away thinking nothing of it.

Despite retiring from church duties in Easter, Mrs Rowe was due to give the Remembrance Service at the Hayes church - as she has done for the past 16 years - while wearing her father's medals.

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Describing when she realised they were missing, she said: "I usually wore my father's medals with my robes, but as I hadn't done anything since Easter I thought I better check I had everything.

"I have always kept my father's medals in the same drawer but when I went to look they weren't there. I thought that was odd, but I thought maybe my sons might have borrowed them.

"All I was thinking was have I taken them out for some reason and put them down somewhere and forgotten. I went all around the house and all the places I could have left them but I couldn't find them."

The next morning, Remembrance Sunday, despite searching in vain for her medals she got ready to give the reading at the church, but not before depositing some loose change into a piggy bank.

This was the moment of horror when what happened sank in - after she saw the piggy bank was gone.

Mrs Rowe, a retired nurse, said: "It was gone. Then I began to think something was not right. I had another look at the front door and I realised it had been forced open and damaged, that was why I couldn't get in."

Despite realising her father's precious medals had in fact been stolen and not misplaced, Mrs Rowe still gave her reading at the church - but rang the police straight away.

She said: "The medals mean so much to me and my family. They're not financially worth very much, but they're worth more than I can explain to me.

"They're so precious to me, I have worn them at every Remembrance Service as far back as I can remember. To have to go without them on this particular Sunday which was so special was upsetting."

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Her father, Private Henry 'Harry' Syms, fought in the First World War after signing up in 1914 aged just 16, but was discharged two years later after he suffered a terrible injury which left him with a limp for the rest of his life.

Mrs Rowe added: "He was badly wounded in a battle. When he recovered he didn't go back. At the end of the war he was given one of the medals which has his initials engraved around the edge."

Receiving two medals for the first conflict, he was unable to fight in World War Two so joined the civil service, for which he received his third medal.

After he father died aged 60 in 1959, the medals passed to her mother who gave them to Mrs Rowe when she died 13 years ago one month shy of her 100th birthday.

She added: "I was so very proud to wear them, I wore them for him."