Stolen engagement ring of veteran’s late fiancée returned with apology note

A former British soldier who served in the Falklands War saw his late fiancée’s engagement ring returned in the mail after it was burgled from his home.

Darren Horsnell, 62, had been on a fundraising trip organised by the veterans’ charity he works for last month when he returned to his home in Lancashire to find it had been rifled through and possessions taken.

But the most precious of the things he lost was the amethyst and diamond-bejewelled ring which had been laying on top of the ashes of his long-term partner Tracey Vick, who died four years ago.

“I felt absolutely sick to my stomach,” Mr Horsnell told The Independent, describing the thief as the “lowest of the low”.

“They must have known what the ring was, the significance of the ring, because it was literally sitting on top of her ashes with the card of remembrance there. But they still took it.”

Mr Horsnell, who now teaches art to former veterans like himself, posted what had happened on Facebook with a message to the thief: “Keep all the other items, bring back the ring and that will be the end of it as far as I am concerned. Post it in the letterbox, leave it by the front door, do whatever you want but give it back to me.”

He then said before he knew it, his message had been shared thousands of times, leaving him “gobsmacked”.

Mr Horsnell added: “I thought... the world is full of scumbags, but then I started getting these reactions from people who didn’t even know me who were doing their best to send the word out as well. They made it very hard for the person who had the ring to get rid of it.”

He had also offered a reward of £2,500 for the ring’s safe return.

But Mr Horsnell said the arrival of an envelope to the Lancashire office of the charity, Veterans in Communities, on 8 October caused the office manager who opened it to swear in shock.

He said: “Then she passed it to our operations manager. He looked straight at me with bloodshot eyes, and he was shocked. And I was like, ‘What? What the hell is it?’ Eventually, they passed it to me, and I just could not believe it. It was the ring inside an envelope.”

Accompanying the ring was a note: “Darren, sorry.”

Mr Horsnell said the moment of the ring’s recovery took him back to Ms Vick’s death. “It was almost like the day I lost her,” he said.

“I never thought that I’d see that ring again - I've got all the memories and the photographs, but that ring was special for several reasons,” he said, recounting the day he’d secretly bought it and later proposed.

Mr Horsnell said the police had told him they believed the burglary was targeted after he publicly posted on Facebook he would be away from home. He said he didn’t know who the thief was, and believed it was not them who returned it but someone else who had come into possession of it.

“I truly believe somebody else came across it with a conscience, and they returned it,” he said.

Mr Horsnell said he’d left the army on mental health grounds after getting injured on active duty in the Falklands and Cyprus.

He was also on duty at Woolwich Barracks in London in 1983 when a bomb went off nearby. He said he and another soldier were shielded from serious injury by a couch they had been on at the time.