WW1: Region's regiment remembered on Western Front

Row after row of identical headstones stand to attention at Tyne Cot Cemetery, a roll call of the sons who never returned. Now 100 years after they marched off to war a little piece of home stands on the battlefields where they fell. Bedford bricks have been taken across the channel to build a memorial to the Bedfordshire Regiment. Ian Mould from Shortstown raised £5,000 to build it after he discovered there was nothing to remember them here on the Western front. Officers from the Royal Anglians travelled to Passchendaele in Belgium for a ceremony to unveil the monument.

Back in Bedford, historian Steve Fuller has spent years researching the stories of the 60,000 soldiers who fought for "The Bedfords" whose barracks were at The Keep in Kempston. We met at the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service where he showed me a newspaper headline from February 1916 which reported "a romantic story of an unknown child". He explained: "As one of the battalions was marching to the front line they discovered a little girl in a ditch at the side of the road. Because they were going to the trenches nobody could take her back so they had to take her with them." They named the toddler Phyllis Trenches and nursed her back to health, cutting up their great coats to make her warm clothing.

Newspapers as far away as Calgary in Canada reported that Phyllis was brought back and adopted by a family in Bedford. However, Steve has never been able to find out what happened to her.

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Adlam was awarded the Victoria Cross for leading his men with such bravery. His son Clive explained that his father brought his talent on the cricket field to the battle field.

Tom Adlam believed that it was simply luck that spared him, while so many of his friends were claimed by the chaos of war.