Isabel Ewart has been on an emotional journey to win back her father’s war medals, which were lost to the family decades ago, ending up in the hands of a collector in Denmark.

After a train journey across Europe, the former Totnes town councillor was able to buy back the medals awarded to her dad, Major James Ewart, for his campaigns with the 8th Army in North Africa and Italy.

Major Ewart died in 1976 when his daughter was just 10 and she has little left to remind her of him.

But after returning with her father’s medals, Isabel, who lives with her husband Paul in Stoke Gabriel, said: “I cried when I picked them up. It’s not quite as good as being able to give Dad a hug, but it’s the closest I’ve been to holding him since he died 42 years ago.

“The box was carefully placed into the bottom of my handbag and was then carried all the way back to Britain and Stoke Gabriel.”

Major Ewart joined the Royal Engineers in 1940 and left the armed forces to work as an engineer with Shell Oil in 1958.

Isabel knows little about his war record, or what happened to his medals.

She said: “I do know he went to Egypt at one point and I have his notebook containing his Arabic vocabulary lessons, which he had on the troop ship.

“He told me he was involved in the capture of a German supply train and that they discovered the Germans had much better coffee than they did. Sadly, I have no other details.”

His medals, which include Africa and Italy Stars and the Cyprus Medal, show that he was mentioned in despatches.

Isabel is now hoping to carry out her own research into her father’s war record to find out exactly what his gallantry award was for.

The existence of the medals was discovered after Isabel’s father-in-law was doing some family research and discovered someone making enquiries about a Major James Ewart on a military website.

Isabel said: “After some email exchanges, he determined that this was my dad. He rang me in November to tell me he’d found all of Dad’s medals with a collector in Denmark.

“At the time I couldn’t speak and said I’d have to call back, I was so overwhelmed. Initially I didn’t feel I could contact the ­collector because I didn’t know if he was prepared to sell them, and I was too upset to think of them being with someone else.

“When I learnt that he would sell them, I was overjoyed. In fact, I couldn’t believe it.”

Isabel said she had paid an undisclosed sum to see the medals returned to her family, but she added: “To me they’re priceless.”

“Mum was a great ­thrower-outer,” she continued. “I have almost nothing of his. Photos, mementos etc are all gone. I do have his dress sword and his field telescope.”

Isabel, who is a consultant clinical neuropsychologist, said she is “flight-­phobic”, so she had to make a journey involving 10 separate train journeys during the two-day trip through the UK, France, Belgium Germany and Denmark, to eventually arrive in the town of Herning to collect the medals.

She said: “As far as I’m concerned, something of Dad has come home to me.

“I still miss Dad and wish he could have shared more of my life.

“I hope he would have been proud of me – I’m ­certainly proud of him.”