THESE German officers from a prisoner-of-war camp at Skipton were attending the funeral of their comrades in Morton Cemetery early in 1919.

During the influenza epidemic at the end of the Great War, infected Germans refused to open their windows. Consequently, without fresh air, “septic pneumonia reaped a terrible harvest”.

Ninety officers were admitted to the Keighley War Hospital at Morton Banks, of whom 42 died. They were buried with military honours at Morton Cemetery.

Their remains were removed in 1967 to a central German cemetery at Cannock in Staffordshire, but their presence in Morton prompted repercussions, providing an ostensible reason for the zeppelin Hindenburg to fly unofficially over Keighley – and other industrial areas – in 1936. Two years later some Germans resident in Yorkshire held a memorial service at the graves, where they gave the Nazi salute.