A recent Examiner profile about Cawthorne military camp brought memories flooding back for former Polish soldier Tony Sosna.

For Tony – who was 90 on New Year’s Day – was one of the first troops to head to the camp in the immediate aftermath of World War Two.

A major exhibition about life at the camp is now on show at the Archives Discovery Centre in Barnsley Town Hall until March 2015.

It will then return to the Victoria Jubilee Museum, Taylor Hill, Cawthorne,

Many Polish troops had no wish to return to their homeland which was then under Communist rule after the war so in May 1946 the British set up the Polish Resettlement Corps, a non-combat unit of the British Army which was designed to ease the Poles’ transition into British civilian life.

Tony was one of 140,000 to join it and they were housed in some 300 camps around Britain.

Cannon Hall at Cawthorne was one of these camps and at its height 1,000 people lived there.

Tony, who now lives in Springwood, said: “Pressure was made on the soldiers to take employment. On the reputation Yorkshire people had as the most friendly in this country with smashing girls I and a few from the institution and old friends from the signals took jobs as weavers in Birstall and lived in Cannon Hall camp.”

He added: “It will never be forgotten. Cement-floored huts, no heating during working days, only at weekends. We managed to start the coke in the metal stoves with newspaper.

There was nothing to start it in the evenings. Small contact was made with the locals. We knew our civilian rights but military rules were in the camp and no wirelesses were allowed.

We befriended a few locals and a carnival on ice was organised at the hump bridge with the help of Roy Kitchen from Cannon Hall who I befriended.”

The ethos changed when it stopped being a military camp and new management was brought in.

Tony said: “Cannon Hall Camp became a centre attraction with communal integration with the locals. A very strong table tennis team was formed and something unheard of happened.

The District Table Tennis Association, after testing our team, accepted it to the first division. I had been involved in the negotiation. Playing matches in the district firmly joined us withe the district community.

“Then a football team playing in the district amateur division brought spectators to the camp games. I joined a dancing school in Barnsley and was soon approached by two professional dancing teachers and arranged one in the camp.

“The camp was full to capacity with ex-soldiers and civilians from German camps and the Middle East. Variety shows were organised. The camp looked more like a holiday camp but accommodation was military style.”

During the later stages of the war Tony had been a radio operator in Normandy and also worked on Operation Pluto which saw British engineers, oil companies and the armed forces construct undersea oil pipelines beneath the English Channel between England and France. At this time Allied forces fighting in Europe required a tremendous amount of fuel.

Tony was then sent to the south of England to track the V2s and try to bring them down.

Towards the end of the war Tony was sent to the Polish 1 Corps of Signals in Scotland and he finally joined the Polish Military Geographical Institute at Largo House in Fife where he lectured on air surveys for surveyors.