HGW Wood First Mother Letter
12th October
1918
Carlisle Lodge
Howard Road
South Norwood
London SE25
Dear Mr. Christison,
Thank you for your kind letter of sympathy for the loss of my son Harry (known to you & his Dulwich & College friends as “Toby”) & for your wish that the Dulwich records of him should be correct. I shall be grateful if you will kindly let me have a copy of the Alleynian in which his name appears & enclose stamps for one. Forgive me for not having answered your letter sooner but was far from well the last few days & unable to write. In answer to your enquiries as to his career since leaving Cambridge he went to the Dennis Slate Works, Stourbridge where things of almost priceless beauty in the way of cut glass are manufactured. [2] As I did not know exactly what his position there was when writing to Mr. [Lanfred???] Jackson the managing director who was also a great personal friend of Harry’s I asked him & enclose his reply. When War broke out he joined the 1/7 Worcestershire Regt. & with them went through all the hard fighting of the Somme Campaign – after that in the winter of 1916 he was sent to Head Quarters & given a staff appointment in the Intelligence Corps where he remained for some months, & was mentioned in dispatches. When things were going badly for the Allies in Italy his old Regt. the Worcesters was sent there and Harry asked to give up his post at Head Qrs. to join them and again go into the fighting line where he remained and was killed during a bombardment on the Asiago Plateau, Italy on the 3rd August [3] last, six weeks after he had an “immediate” D.S.O. awarded to him on the field for the brilliant way he had led an attack. I send you a newspaper cutting of the official report of his gaining the D.S.O. & also one from an account of his career & shall be glad if you will kindly return them to me as well as Mr. Jackson’s letter. You write of “Toby” as always so cheery & bright & I may add that in this home he was one of the best & most loving of sons so his death has been a horrible grief to us all. Still I know I ought to feel proud & happy to have had two sons who both so nobly gave their lives to serve their country. I wonder if you ever come across an Officer called Miller who is now at the Currough Camp, a great friend of Toby’s at Cambridge & like him a Peterhouse man.
With kind regards,
Yours very sincerely
Mary Wood