Martin Kiss holds a photo of his grandparents, from whom he received a golden ring in Herrieden, southern Germany. Recently, the ring was returned to the family of 2nd Lt. David C. Cox, a U.S. Army aviator who traded the ring for food in a German POW camp after his plane was shot down.

RALEIGH, N.C. — After a year and a half behind barbed wire as a prisoner in World War II, 2nd Lt. David C. Cox had just about reached his breaking point.

Deliveries of Red Cross parcels to Stalag VII-A had all but ceased, and the U.S. Army bomber co-pilot and his fellow POWs were living on bug-infested soup and bread.

Cold and hungry, the North Carolinian made a difficult decision. He slipped the gold aviator’s ring off his finger and passed it through a fence to an Italian POW, who handed back a couple of chocolate bars.

He would never again see the ring. But it did not disappear.

Last week, about a dozen family members and friends gathered in the living room of David C. Cox Jr.’s Raleigh home and watched as he opened a small yellow parcel from Germany and carefully removed a little plastic box.

“And here it is,” he said with a long sigh as he pulled out the ring. “Oh, my goodness. ... I never thought it would ever happen. I thought it was gone. We all thought it was gone.

“He thought it was gone,” he said of his late father.

The story of how the ring made it back to the Cox family is a testament to a former enemy’s generosity, the reach of the Internet and the healing power of time.

Following the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the elder Cox left college and enlisted. He graduated from flight school on July 26, 1942.

To celebrate his commission, Irvin and Connie Bell Cox presented their middle son with a gold signet ring, the oval emblazoned with a raised propeller and wings. Engraved inside were the words, “Mother & Father to David C. Cox Greensboro, NC,” and the numbers 10-4-18-42 — his birthday and the current year.

As a co-pilot in the B-17 “Flying Fortress,” Cox flew more than a dozen bombing missions before his plane was shot down over Germany.

He was shipped to Stalag Luft III, then to Stalag VII-A near Moosburg, where he traded the ring for candy. After the war, he returned to North Carolina. He started a tire retreading equipment company with his brother and raised three children.

Now fast-forward to today and the tiny Bavarian village of Hohenberg.

Mark and Mindy Turner moved there about a year ago so he could take a job as an air traffic controller at the nearby U.S. Army installation in Ansbach. Earlier this month, the couple was having dinner with their neighbors, Martin and Regina Kiss, who showed them the gold ring — then told a story.

A Russian soldier on his way home after the war traded the ring to the family for room and board, Kiss’ grandmother told him. Kiss kept the ring, realizing it must have come from an American soldier.

Still, he never stopped thinking about the original owner — and now, with two computer-savvy Americans in his home, he asked for help.

Mark Turner went online when he got back home. Within 20 minutes, he’d hit pay dirt.

He found a 2005 master’s thesis from North Carolina State University. One focus of Norwood McDowell’s 219-page paper was the war diary of his wife’s grandfather, David C. Cox Sr. — the name on the ring’s inscription.

After several e-mails and phone calls, the ring was on its way to the United States.

Kiss — whose own grandfather spent several years in a Soviet camp during and after the war — said his only regret is that David Cox Sr. and his grandmother weren’t alive to share the “happy ending.”