Lost and found: The story of Sgt Eggleston's WW1 medal

To the five-year-old boy playing on the beach, his father - who had died only a few months earlier - was, in every sense of the word, a true hero.

As he ran up and down to the sea, little Ben Eggleston had with him his most cherished possession: one of his late father's medals from the First World War. He took it with him everywhere he went.

Imagine the horror when, at the end of the day, Ben realised he had somehow lost the medal among the countless pebbles of Brighton beach. He was heartbroken.

That was in 1938.

For more than 70 years, the medal awarded to Sgt Stephen Eggleston (1888-1938) remained lost. Until now.

In a remarkable twist of fate, Ben - 82 on Wednesday - has been re-united with the 1914 Star medal - more commonly known as the Mons Star - awarded to Croydon-born Sgt Eggleston when was still a private in the 4th Battalion Middlesex Regiment, which is believed to have been the first British infantry unit to fire on the Germans in the Battle of Mons in August 1914.

Ben, a retired engineer living in Norfolk, never forgot the lost medal; he subsequently travelled throughout England and the battlefields of France and Belgium researching his father's military history.

He also visited numerous archives, antique fairs, and medal collections. More recently, he spent many hundreds of hours on the internet in an attempt to locate the lost medal. Every visit to Brighton by him, his wife, son and daughter, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild has involved - at the very least - a cursory search on the beach, in case the sea had washed it up.

The whole family became resigned to the fact that the medal would never be seen again - even though Ben couldn't stop himself going on the internet almost every day to enter his father's name, service number, and regiment. Just in case a miracle occurred.

Which it now has. Jane Bulmer - Sgt Eggleston's granddaughter - explains: "Last week, he couldn't believe his eyes when an eBay lot suddenly popped up on screen showing a Mons Star inscribed with his father's name, regiment, and service number.

"The lot was part of a five-day auction by a Lincolnshire collector, who had owned the Mons Star for more than 30 years and had now decided to sell it. The seller had bought it himself from another collector, whose name was long forgotten, and there was no record of what had happened to the medal in the intervening 40 years before he had acquired it. This didn't matter to my father as the important thing was that the Star had not been lost."

Ben was, of course, overjoyed. He told Brighton and Hove Independent: "After all these years of wondering what had happened to the medal, we just sat there in amazement looking at the screen - hardly daring to believe that what we were seeing could really be true."

The family arranged to travel to Lincolnshire to collect the medal, rather than trust the Royal Mail.

Ben added: "After all these years of searching, it seems incredibly poignant and significant that the medal should turn up now, on the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, so close to Remembrance Day and at my age in life. I am delighted that it is now back with our family as it serves as an emblem of my father's heroism, and of the many hundreds of thousands of men who lost their lives or were injured in this terrible conflict."

The Mons Star will now join both Sgt Eggleston's Meritorious Service Medal and his Military Medal, which he was awarded for bravery during the first day of the Battle of the Somme on July 1 1916, when his battalion was tasked with taking a farmhouse at Fricourt.