Lieutenant-Colonel Humphrey Woods
9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

Humphrey said to me, ‘I haven’t said this to anybody else but I know I’m going to be killed when we get over to the other side … I feel it in my bones.’ Here’s a chap who’s been through it all, and been blown up on mines and everything else. But he somehow felt that he was going to be killed … supernatural or whatever you’d like to call it, he knew he’d come to the end … That was the epitome of courage, to know you’re going to be killed but go on.

(Maj-Gen. H.J. Mogg, interview, 28 Mar 1989)

Born in Lewes, Sussex, on 15 September 1915, Humphrey Reginald Woods joined the Kings Royal Rifle Corps as second lieutenant in 1936 after attending Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He served with 1st Battalion from Burma to the Middle East at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was twice wounded in North Africa and earned the Military Cross for gallantry in 1941. He earned a M.C. Bar for actions on 16 July 1942: “The determination of this officer to to engage the enemy more closely has been an inspiration to those fortunate enough to command him as well as those happy enough to serve under him.”

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