Ossett WW1 Fallen — A-J

On 4^th August 1914 Great Britain declared war on the German Empire. 100 years later in 2014 the intention was to recognise that moment in history and the effect it had on the town and its people. It was also a challenge. A challenge to identify the Ossett men who fell in The Great War 1914-1918 (WWI) and to write their biographies to inform this and future generations of the sacrifices they made for future generations. As it turned out it led to much more than was ever contemplated but that’s another story.

The search for the lives and deaths of these men began with a list of 230 names recorded in the 1928 Unveiling and Dedication Programme issued by Ossett Borough Council for the unveiling of the Memorial on Sunday 11^th November 1928. We were helped immensely by Ossett Library and especially librarian Mrs. Dorothy Wainwright who had collected and captured volumes of cuttings from the Ossett Observer which recorded the sad deaths of so many brave men.

We were helped too when we discovered another seventeen Ossett rolls of honour  established in the 1920’s by churches, societies, employers and so on. Our final sources of information came from  The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and the UK Soldiers Died in the Great War  1914-1919 published in 1921 by HMSO  for the War Office.

The integrity of our research was uppermost in our minds as we sought written evidence to ensure that those who we were to call The Ossett Fallen were either born or had lived in Ossett. Equally importantly we adopted the CWGC  position which requires that,  for commemoration as a WWI casualty, service personnel must have died between 4^th August 1914 and 31st August 1921.

The distillation of all these sources of information left us with a total death toll of 319 Ossett men in WWI. This is 89 more than were remembered in Ossett in 1928. Much of this difference can be put down to  the fact that ten years had passed between the end of the war and the first formal commemoration in 1928. In that time many families had moved away from Ossett and, of course, communication sources in those days were less available and less sophisticated than those which now exist.

At least 319 Ossett men lost their lives during WW1 and these were mainly young men aged under 40 years of age. In total, the dead numbered about 2% of Ossett’s population at that time, but many more would return home wounded, maimed or suffering from shell-shock. Most were reluctant to speak about the horrors that they went through, if they were lucky enough to survive.

Presented here are some of the stories of those Ossett men as we remember them more than a century after their deaths. Many of us have ancestors who fought in the Great War and it touched the lives of the majority. We hope you will find some understanding of the lives and the sacrifices of those brave men in the stories presented here. Just click on the images below and read their story — with details of their tragically short lives and the action in which they made the ultimate sacrifice.

Many of the soldiers and sailors featured lay where they died and sadly their bodies were never recovered. These stories of The Ossett Fallen give a voice to those who died so that we might live in freedom.

Click here to download the WW1, 2018 Ossett Heritage Roll of Honour.