Born 1893 at Stoke Newington, son of Arthur William (Clockmaker) and Julia Mary Wood. 1901 and 1911: A Scholar (1901) and Student (1911) with his family at “Eversley” Grove Hill, South Woodford. An Old Bancroftian, he obtained a Degree in History and French from University College London, had an interest in Germany and passed examinations in the language. He also spent a short while at a German school, before returning to his university studies and in due course a teaching position at Stamford Grammar School in Lincolnshire. He married Hilda Newman of Stansted in February 1917, and his cousin was Sir Henry Wood of Queens Hall.
Having obtained a Territorial Commission in the Lincolnshire Regiment before the war, he was embodied and deployed to France as a Bomb Officer. After a long time at the front he was appointed second in command of the Grenade School at 2 Army HQ, and was mentioned in dispatches. He survived the attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt. Returning to the UK in July 1916 he trained as an Observer with the RFC, and was sent back to France in early 1917 joining 59 Squadron. There he took on the role of Mess Secretary.
On Friday 13th April 1917 he left La Bellevue airfield in RE8 A3190 with Captain James Maitland Stuart, escorting a photo reconnaissance mission to the area around Etaing. They took off at about 0815 with five other aircraft, and were feared lost when they failed to return by 11.15. In fact all six aircraft were posted missing; ten of 12 crewmen were dead, all killed in a little under five minutes.
The airfield later reported that a German aircraft dropped a message confirming that Wood had been Killed in Action over enemy lines. It emerged that he had been shot down in flames at 08.58 between Vitry en Artois and Brebieres, becoming the forty first ‘kill’ for Rittmeister Baron Manfred von Richthofen of Jasta 11.
Research by Adrian Lee, Local Historian
Sources:
Ancestry.com
The Bancroftian, Simon Coxall
Woodford Times
Under the Guns of the Red Baron, by Franks, Giblin and McCreery
For more information on this individual please see The Old Bancroftian website.