World War 1 Bible Come Home

The Bible is a book. But it is so much more. And when a man brings it to war, it often becomes the center of his life. One such Bible, lost in World War I, is about to come home. It's a piece of history in more ways than one.

On April 12 1918, Herbert Hodgson fell into a shell hole during an attack near Messines in Belgium. There he found a Bible encrusted with mud.

In his memoirs he wrote: "There was no name inside it but the army service number 34816 had been written across the top outer edges of the pages". He was told by an officer the original owner would be impossible to trace and he should keep it for luck.

His family without success tried to trace the number until last June his publisher Geoffrey Hodgson (no relation) identified the original owner of the Bible as Richard Cook, of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.