L-Cpl Philip Herbert Watkins, 200985, 1/5th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action in Palestine on July 20th, 1917. He was aged 27 and married to Maud, living at 14 Highbury Road, Luton.

Capt Armstrong said he had died leading his men, and Lieut W. A. Shaw wrote: "On July 20th we attacked a Turkish position at night time. He was under my command and behaved in a most gallant way. He showed the greatest coolness. On reaching our lines he was hit in the head by a flying fragment of shell."

Philip Watkins had enlisted in October 1915 and went to Egypt in May 1916. Nothing more about him was revealed by local Press reports of his death, but family history records suggest he was born in Croydon, Surrey, in 1891, and the Bedfordshire Advertiser carried a family announcement when he married straw hat finisher Maud Lawrence, of Hitchin Road, at St Matthew's Church, Luton, on October 19th, 1912.