Sergeant William Wood

Sergeant William 'Timber' Wood served with a number of different supporting arms and services of Airborne Forces from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

William Wood was born in June 1928. When the Second World War broke out, he was still a schoolboy, but he joined the Army at the Army Apprenticeship College at Chepstow, Monmouthshire in 1943 as a Boy Soldier.

At the end of the War, William remained in the Army, and eventually went to Aldershot to undergo Pre-Parachute Selection Training (P Company) in 1946, before he was sent to Upper Heyford for his parachute training in early 1947.

William qualified and joined the 6th Airborne deployment to Palestine, to serve with 66th Airborne Anti-Tank Regiment Light Aid Detachment(LAD). The following year, he transferred to the 33rd Airborne Light Regiment Royal Artillery, and undertook service in the British Army of the Rhine and the UK in four years service with the unit until 1952.

William left Airborne service for a number of years to serve with the 1st Battalion, Dorset Regiment, with whom he was sent to Korea and later to Malaya.

William returned to Airborne Forces in 1956 to join 16 Parachute Brigade Workshops REME, with whom he served until leaving the Army in 1961. At the end of his career, he had also added overseas operational deployments to Jordan, Cyprus and Egypt to those in Palestine and the BAOR in the 1940s.

William has retained a great interest in Airborne Forces. He joined the Aldershot Branch of the PRA in the mid-1960s, and remains an active member of the Airborne veterans community to this day.