Rank: Lieutenant
Service No: 176460
Regiment: The Parachute Regiment, Army Air Corps, 2nd Battalion.
Died: 14 October 1944
Age: 25 years old
M.A. (Cantab.).
Reginald was born on the 25th September 1919 in Lenaderg, Banbridge, Co. Down, Northern Ireland He was the younger son of Captain Alfred Reginald Woods and Eileen Elizabeth Woods (née Patterson). He had an older brother Adam Desmond. His was a military family. His brother was in the Royal Ulster Rifles and had won the Military Cross serving in Palestine, while their father had served in the Royal Munster Fusiliers in the First World War.
Reginald was educated at Sedburgh School in Cumbria before matriculating to Queen's College, Cambridge where he was studying Medieval & Modern Languages when war was declared with Germany. He was awarded a Degree by proxy and granted an emergency commission with the Royal Ulster Rifles on the 1st March 1941. He was posted to 1st Battalion, RUR, which at that time was based in the Black Mountains on defence duties and formed part of 31st Infantry Brigade Group. He was nicknamed 'Lakari' by the old hands of the battalion who had served in India. 'Lakari' is a Hindustani word meaning 'wood'. Later that year the brigade was reorganised and formally re-designated on the 10th December 1941 as the 1st Airlanding Brigade Group. The Battalion spent the following months training for its new glider-borne air assault role with 1st Airborne Division.
On the 5th May 1943, Bryan volunteered for service with The Parachute Regiment and attended course 61B which started at RAF Ringway on the 26th April 1943. The instructors' notes record that Bryan was an "excellent leader, capable and efficient performer." The course was shortened because of the urgent need to supply reinforcements to 1st Parachute Brigade following the bloody fighting and heavy losses sustained in Tunisia. Because of his Irish accent Reginald was known as 'Danny Boy' by the other officers. He joined the 2nd Parachute Battalion on the 2nd June 1943 and went on to fight in Sicily and Italy.
In July 1944 Reginald got engaged to Joan Swinley. Joan was serving in the Women's Royal Naval Service. She was the daughter of Commander Roland Frith Balfour Swinley and Mrs Barbara Joan Swinley (née Jobson) of Himley Lodge, Newbury, Berkshire. Their engagement was announced in the Belfast News-Letter on the 29th July 1944.
On the 17th September 1944 'Operation Market Garden' was launched. This was a daring and ambitious scheme to cross the River Rhine, advance into Northern Germany and so shorten the war. In order for it to succeed the plan involved the seizure of key bridges in the Netherlands with troops of the British Airborne Division landing by parachute and glider.
On the 17th September 1944 Reginald Woods was the first man to exit the Dakota that flew the platoon to Arnhem. On the bridge at Arnhem he was in command of the Battalion's mortar platoon. He excelled himself and was heavily involved in the fighting but it was against overwhelming odds. Towards the end of the battle he suffered shrapnel wounds, which ultimately would prove to be fatal. Taken prisoner by the Germans he was later transferred to Prisoner of War Camp Stalag XIB at Soltau.
Reginald died on the 14th October 1944, aged 25 years. A fellow POW later gave this account:
"One morning I saw some members of my battalion under the command of the RSM pulling a handcart along with a plain pine coffin on it. Behind the cart were two men carrying a huge wreath of laurel and pine with a large golden ribbon adorning it; this had obviously been made from one of our nylon identification scarves, which were used for calling in air support. Later I learned that it was the funeral of my own platoon officer, Lieutenant Woods, who had been wounded in the lung at Arnhem and had died as the result of the terrible journey to the camp. This was yet another needless death."
Reginald was initially given a field burial in the local POW cemetery at Oerbke, Fallingbostel. After the war his remains were exhumed and re-buried in Becklingen War Cemetery, Niedersachsen, Germany.
However, Reginald is also commemorated in the following locations:
Gilford War Memorial
Banbridge War Memorial
Sedburgh School, Cumbria Roll of Honour
Queen's College Cambridge War Memorial & Roll of Honour
On the 12th March 1945 in Belfast, Probate was granted to Alfred Reginald Woods. a 'gentleman'. Effects £1,596 5s 9d.
His fiancée Joan, to whom he been engaged for only one month, eventually got married in 1952 to John E. Heslop.
Reginald's headstone bears the personal epitaph "No man shall say that he failed".
(Sources: CWGC, Find My Past, Ancestry, Society of Friends of the Airborne Museum (Jan Hey 2011), Contributor: Richard Edgar (47268101), Marcel Boven (warcemeteries.nl), 1st British Airborne Division Officer's Records, Paradata.org, Remember Arnhem by John Fairley, IWM, Sedburgh School, Cumbria, Queen's College Cambridge, newspaper archives, Wikipedia)
(Bio: Woose) / Source :
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18487331/reginald-bryan-woods
