L Cpl 17989, 6th Bn Wiltshire Regt
Initially the Wooding family had been farmers at the Ash Tree in the 1830s and the children had been farmers, coal dealers, miners and bricklayers. Joseph Wooding though was a fireman for a stationary engine – either at the pottery or the railway station – and on 5th October 1895 he married Mary Elizabeth Allman at St. John the Baptist church in Armitage. Their first child, Harry, was born in Armitage very shortly after and they moved to Aston, Birmingham. They came back to Armitage though to have him baptised on Easter Day 1876 – the 5th April. Joseph was now employed by LNWR and three more children followed – another boy and two girls.
By 1910 Harry had started in his first job – as a railway call boy at Birmingham Curzon Street station which had been relegated to goods since the opening of Birmingham New Street. It was a busy station so he would have worked shifts and he had to make sure that the sleeping drivers and firemen were at work in time for the start of what would have been an irregular shift. His busiest time would have been the night shift between 12.00 and 8.00 am when he would travel the area to knock up the crew. When he wasn’t doing that his job would have been to clean the engines.
Harry attested to join the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry but when his mobilisation papers arrived he actually joined the 6th Bn Wiltshires and on 19th July 1915 he disembarked in France. A couple of weeks after landing in France Harry suffered epileptic fits and was hospitalised for 8 days before being returned to his unit on 11th August.
On the 1st July 1916 the Wiltshires, as part of the 58th Brigade in the 19th Western Division, took part in the Battle for Albert which was the first phase of the Battle of the Somme. Harry was badly wounded on 13th July in the battle for Mametz Wood and died shortly after. He is commemorated at theHeilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt-L’Abbe, France.