THE 9th Battalion of the Cameronians or Scottish Rifles was stationed in Keighley from the summer of 1943 till April of the following year.

Of all the various units based here at different times, the Cameronians are especially remembered, for they were here long enough to become part of our community.

Keighley girls even sang comic home-made songs about them!

“They were stationed in Pilgrim’s Mill at East Parade,” one wartime local recalls. “Also they had their own band and used to play for dances at the Baths Hall.”

They fielded a good football team which included several former professionals, and held their sports in Victoria Park.

Here they are entertaining local boys at a donkey and pony gymkhana at Lawkholme.

While in Keighley the battalion had never been in action as a unit. During the last year of the war in Europe they were to lose 345 out of an original fighting strength of 700 – a sobering statistic, even allowing for additional drafts. “This”, as one of their surviving NCOs was to comment, “is the price of freedom”.