Three decades after it vanished, the only Victoria Cross ever awarded to a Ukrainian-Canadian soldier is back on display in the Canadian War Museum.

For Claudette Wright, the medal's return is a long-awaited tribute to her grandfather, the late Corporal Filip Konowol.

"I think he would have been very proud," Wright told CTV News, lamenting the fact her grandfather was never made a national hero for his storming two German machine gun nests in France, in 1917.

He killed 16 enemy soldiers before being shot by a sniper.

For his efforts, Konowol was awarded the rare distinction -- the Commonwealth nations' highest decoration for valour.

According to Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, Konowol's congratulations were short-lived.

"When he recovered he was personally presented with the Victoria Cross by King George the Fifth who said your deed is among the most daring in the history of the army."

Soon after, Luciuk says, Konowol's life took a tragic turn and was largely forgotten.

Konowal stabbed a man, pleaded insanity and was institutionalized. When he got out, he settled into work as a janitor on Parliament Hill -- a job he held until his death in 1959.

"He never bragged about his Victoria Cross except once joking how he'd learned to clean up with a mop as he had once cleaned up with his rifle," Luciuk, who has championed Konowol's story as a labour of love, told CTV.

As Konowol fell out of the spotlight, so did his medal. It went missing from the War Museum in Ottawa during the early 1970s, only showing up again this April.

The RCMP snagged the medal when it went up for sale at an auction house in London, Ontario.

The mystery of who took it and why remains unsolved, as the RCMP failed to trace the medal's whereabouts during those lost decades.

Nevertheless, for Konowal's family it's enough that their hero's long lost reward is finally home.

"It's a great day they finally found it," Wright says.