William ‘Willie’ Woods was born in Hemel Hempstead at the beginning of 1877. He was the youngest but one child of George Woods and Martha Mansell and his siblings were: Maude Louisa, Clara, George, Annie, Walter, Rosa Sarah and Samuel Leonard. When he was born, Willie’s family lived in Ebberns Cottages on Durrants Hill near Frogmore in Apsley. His father George worked as a ‘Tanner’ probably at nearby Cornerhall where Henry Balderson had a tannery adjacent to his wharf on the Grand Junction Canal.

Willie’s mother Martha died in 1892 aged fifty-six shortly after he had started work with John Dickinson & Co Limited in Apsley Mills. Ten years later he is recorded living as a ‘Boarder’ with the Gwinnell family at Langley Bridge in Abbott’s Langley. His employment in not recorded but it seems likely that he was still working at Dickinsons.

His father George died in 1907 when Willie was aged thirty and a few years later when he was working as a ‘Carter’ for Walter Greey, who ran an upholstery business at 15 High Street in Hemel Hempstead, he was courting Charlotte Elizabeth Greenhill. Charlotte was a local girl who worked in the Envelope Department at Dickinsons where she and Willie had most probably first met. His youngest sibling Samuel died in 1912 and just a year later Willie married his sweetheart Charlotte in Hemel Hempstead. The newly-weds set up home at 49 Bury Road in Hemel Hempstead where they had their only child Nancy Ellen in 1915.

Willie enlisted one week before Christmas 1916 when he was thirty-nine years old. He attested at Watford and joined the Bedfordshire Regiment and was posted to the 8th Battalion to train. Only three months later he was sent to France at the end of March 1917. He saw action almost as soon as he arrived at the Front and in mid-April he fought in the Battle of Hill 70. Between the 15th and 19th of the month he experienced heavy artillery shelling and intensive machine gun fire in the trenches, as he and his comrades made fruitless attempts to gain ground.

One month later on the front line at Mazingarbe Willie was killed, the only soldier from the Battalion who died on Monday, 21st May 1917. The Unit war diary recorded the following: “21 May 1917 In trenches as above. Enemy mortars and aerial darts were active. At night a combined machine gun shoot carried out on Bde. front. Enemy retaliation feeble. Casualties 1 O.R. killed, 9 OR wounded.”

A report of his death appeared in the Hemel Gazette two weeks later at the beginning of June 1917.

Willie is Remembered with Honour in the Philosophe British Cemetery, Mazingarbe, Pas-de-Calais, France, where he is interred in Grave I.P.42.

He was 40 years old when he died.

Willie was entitled to the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.