"THE expected has happened. One felt it all yesterday. The air seemed electric with anticipation and the actual coming of the momentous message was largely in the nature of an anti-climax," proclaimed the leader column of the Oldham Standard newspaper on November 11, 1918.

It was hardly surprising that it took a short while for the full implications of what had happened to sink in – after all, the Great War (as it was then called) had dominated the lives of every citizen for over four years. More to the point, the toll in fatalities ran into the millions and there was not a British household from the Hebrides to Land’s End that had not been marked in some way by its bloody fingerprint.

Oldham, of course, was no different. Close to 3,000 men had given their lives from the town and its districts, with hundreds more registered in an area yet to become part of the borough – Saddleworth.

Thousands more were left with psychological or physical scars that would trouble them for the rest of their lives. Still, at least they would now be coming home.

What, of course, they would be coming home to is a tragic story in its own right. Unemployment was high and many of the men were strangers to their loved ones –not least children who had been born, or grown up, in their absence.

Still, these were problems yet to be faced; for now it was enough for the soldiers and their families to contemplate the previously unthinkable – a future.

The Oldham Standard reported that on the "greatest day in history" when the guns fell silent on the Western Front (at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month), the news initially crept in without fanfare via telegrams to the local post offices. Soon the word had started to spread on the streets, in the shops and factories.

The result was described in Oldham as "a disease which, in thousands of instances, led to a purging of hats and caps, coats and jackets and an exodus that even the veriest martinet of a foreman or onlooker could only gaze at with indulgent eye".

In a short time most of the major employers saw their employees leave en-masse. Instead of hooting the factory horns at noon to announce a break for lunch, the bosses wisely joined in the party and began sounding the horns in a cacophony of celebration.

"The tramway employees were also infected and the news had not been long abroad before trams began to make unscheduled appearances in the depots, and the drivers and conductors unblushingly announced their intention of knocking off," reported the local paper.

This, however, did not stop the public spilling into the streets and heading on foot to the centre of town. The exact numbers were hard to calculate, but tens of thousands were estimated to have thronged into the main square in front of the old town hall.

As for the Mayor, he had called all councillors and council officers to an urgent meeting to decide how the situation could be dealt with – and to start making plans as to how the town would formally mark the occasion.

Also still busy working were the telephone operators and telegraphists who were swamped for two hours with people wanting to send and receive messages.

"On the whole," reported the Standard, "the joy was too deep for mere ‘mafficking’. Of course, there was some hurrahing, some throwing of caps into the air, but in the main ebullitions took the form of hearty verbal congratulations and irresponsible handshaking; perfect strangers expressing a desire to mangle one’s digits in a hearty grasp."

On a more sombre note, it was reported that crowds had also taken to the streets in Germany – mainly to riot.

"Reports which arrived here from Berlin at three o’clock this morning state that the revolution in the German capital is in full swing and that the Reds have occupied a great part of Berlin."

Here was the rub, the conquered had not just been beaten, but humiliated by the stringent terms of the armistice, terms that would be underlined at the official end of the war the following year in Versaille.

The price the Germans would be forced to pay in reperations was so high that many feared it inevitable that it could only result in further conflict in the years to come. They were to be proved right.

Unemployment and poor housing was to result in political unrest in towns like Oldham, although the danger of trained killers returning home in numbers to stage their own uprising was lessened by the fact that the troops were demobolised in stages, with many not returning until the following year. The Oldham Pals Battalion (the 24th Manchesters) were among those held back to serve on the German borders.

And, while the guns had fallen silent, on November 11, 1918, men would continue to die of their wounds in the ensuing years. Other families still hoped – nearly all in vain – that a son or husband listed as missing might yet turn up.

And what of the family of Corporal Oliver Holden Armitage, of Rochdale Road, High Crompton? While the crowds were on the streets and the papers full of the celebrations, buried in a column alongside was news of the RAF pilot. He was 36 and connected with Greenhill United Methodist School – and Oliver would not be coming back home . . .

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