Pte. Arthur Wood

Private Arthur P. (Timber) Wood 14002827
Information provided by Pte. Wood's son Geoff Wood. It is greatly appreciated.

His name - Private Arthur P. (Timber) Wood 14002827, he joined the Battalion from The Black Watch in, I think late 1943. He trained at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, which is only about half an hour up the road from where I now live. From there he went to Ringway (Manchester Airport), for jump training and to the Battalion at Bulford after qualifying as a Paratrooper.

His first operational jump was at Ranville 5th June 1944, he was a member of "B" Coy then which was as you would know a Rifle Company. After the landings on the drop zone, the Company were tasked with holding the flank West of Pegasus Bridge, at La Port. This is basically what I can recall from his stories that I was told as I grew up, and with me researching his career.

The next operation he was to go on was his last as he was wounded, this was in the Belgian Ardennes Christmas 1944. Again working from his recollections and a little bit of information from his former collegues, I know that the Battalion were engaged in fighting around a village called Wavreille, he was this time with "A" Coy. He and a party were tasked with tank hunting with a Piat, as there was a lot of Tiger tanks in the area.

On this particular night in early January 1945, the party were ordered to go out into the freezing snow to hunt two Tiger tanks that were causing a lot of upset in the around Wavreille, they came across one of the tanks in a wooded area, and to the right a German soldier was seen in a field, he was the tanks spotter. He was shot by one of the Paras, I think Private Fred Garner, who killed him outright. The tanks then had no eyes, and started to withdraw, the second tank had just come into view and was fired on by the Piat, which hit the track knocking it off. The other tank then reversed up a road closly followed by the hunter party, it was at this time that my Father was wounded, he stepped on a shoe mine in the snow. It amputated the lower part of his Right leg just below the knee, Dad was left for dead as the party again engaged the second Tiger tank, the party withdrew from the tank hunting after taking on alot of machine gun fire from the Tigers.

This left Dad lying in the freezing snow, bleeding and close to death. The extreme cold of the snow stemmed the bleeding and in the early hours of the next morning an R.A.M.C unit was sent to recover him. He was rushed to the dressing station, where one of the Battalions medics Stan Jamieson was. These were his words when I contacted him some months ago, after finding out that he was the very man who had helped in saving the life of my Dad. Stan said to me over a Telephone conversation that he can remember a young/ handsome Paratrooper being brought into him, with the lower part of his right leg hanging off. He thought that he had been hit by a mortar shell? But he acted fast, administered Morphine and cut away what was left of the limb. He dressed the wound with field dressings, and sent him down the line for operation. He said that Dad had lost that much blood that he would not have survived for more than a few hours.

Dad was taken to an Aid post, operated on and given a transfusion. He was later sent back to England to recover, and undergo further operations. He ended up at Roehampton Hospital, and was demobbed on medical grounds. Dad lived out the War and many Years since, until his untimely death in 1982 at the age of 54 from Renal failiure. He was a great man, he always talked constantly about his time with the greatest Parachute Battalion ever.