Dennis Woodcock

Dennis Woodcock

March 1917 - May 2006

My Dad and his two brothers were brought up in the Birmingham area by his Quaker parents, and he attended the Quaker school Ackworth from age 8 to 18.

He joined the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in 1939, and was first deployed to Finland in 1940 and then assigned to the Free French forces in North Africa, returning with them to the UK in 1944. Crossing the Channel as part of the D-day landings, he remained assigned to General Leclerc’s army as the Allied forces progressed east. He was part of the liberation of Paris with his French colleagues, followed by the liberation of Strasbourg.

In January 1945, he was seriously injured in the leg when a tank exploded close to him, and he was evacuated back to the UK where he spent many months in hospital.

He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for rescuing a senior French officer from a German minefield, and a medal of service from the Finnish government.

Like so many of his war-time generation, he was reluctant to talk too much about his experience of war, but after his eightieth birthday we did persuade him to write some stories of his day to day experiences, and these are what follow on this website.

Here is a link to a French website that sets out the medical support to Leclerc’s army with a section on the FAU, known as ‘Les Quakers’.  We only discovered this recently, and it lists the 30 British men involved and their ambulances, each given a female name in truly British fashion. It is easy to spot the photographs of Dad’s ambulance, named Janet Elizabeth, my Mum’s  name. We never knew of this loving connection back to the UK, where Mum worked at Bletchley Park. She also never told us about her work.

You may be reading this as a member of our extended family and want an answer to your question ‘What did Bumpy Grandpa do in the war ?’, or you may be just researching the overall enormous war effort seen through the individual eyes of the many taking some part.  Whatever your reason, I hope you can read between the lines to see the principles, the determination, the dry humour and the overall decency of my Dad.  He was just one of so many that were involved in a world war, and he was lucky to survive alive. He went on to live a quiet and happy life.  He could be described as just another ordinary man, but,  as has been said by others, the final success of the overall war effort was achieved by ordinary men doing extraordinary things.

Thanks, Dad

Tim Woodcock

tim.woodcock@wanadoo.fr