大象传媒

I was born in 1934 and, therefore, was just starting school in 1939, the outbreak of World War II. I rember in this first year we used to have a sleep in the afternoons due to missing sleep at night due to the air raids.

I lived up Fields Lane and went to the local Holy Trinity School just across the road.

As I grew older and the war progressed, we got quite a few air raid siren warnings when we had to go outside to the air raid shelter, which we shared with the next door. We had to stay there sometimes 1-2 hours until the 'all clear' siren was sounded.

As a consequence of this, a scheme was evolved that if the siren went at, say, 1.00 am and lasted one hour, we didn't have to go to school until 10.30 am the following day to compensate for loss of sleep.

I remember this happended on one occasion and according to the 'older boys' up the street, it should be a 10.30 am start. There was a large area of land at the top of the street which we used as a play area as the building of houses was stopping at the outbreak of the war. All was going well until up the street strode the very well respected Headmaster of Holy Trinity, Harold Moss J.P. "All the rest of the school had turned up" he said. "Go and tell your parents you are going straight to school".

Another aspect of the war was that a large number of troops - Royal Signals - were stationed in Ossett up Wesley Street at Westfield Mill (now Millfields Housing site). They used to use the Church Street recreation ground, next to the school, for P.T. and Sport. I remember going up Wesley Street to look at the 'Barracks'. There was a Sentry Box at each entry.

In the summer Ossett Centre was packed with troops on an evening. My Uncle John
(John Macauley) had a Fish and Chip shop on Bank Street. Having married my father's sister, who was originally from Glasgow, a plumber by trade, but he decided to come to Ossett before the war and open up the fish shop on Bank Street as "jocks".

During the war he did a roaring trade because at the rear of the fish shop he had a "supper room" (not a cafe) where you could get fish and chips, peas, tea, bread and butter at lunchtime and evening. The troope patronised the supper room at night and my Uncle John used to get extra rations for providing this service. Incidentally, John's daughter (my cousin Joyce) who worked as a waitress in the "supper room" ended up marrying a soilder from London who she had met there.

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