Reginald George Woodcock
Apprentice bricklayer.
- Family History
- Military history
- Extra information
- Photographs
Son of Christopher and Eliza Gertrude Woodcock of the Anvil Inn, Portland Street, Mansfield Woodhouse.
Baptised George Reginald at St Edmund's Church on 13th August 1919. Reginald is also George Reginald on the CWGC site.
Eliza died in 1934.
Reginald had one sister, Evelyn born in 1923.
He married Aileen Short in 1942 they had no children. Aileen married again in 1946 to Timothy Bramley.
The Royal Fusilers were stationed in North Africa and were involved in the invasion of Sicily and Italy.
In the summer of 1944, after the fall of Rome on the 5th June the Germans retreated north forming a defensive line from the mouth of the Arno, through Pisa, Florence and out to Rimini on the east coast. They blew up the bridges in Florence, due to it's cultural significance they left the Ponte Vecchio standing. Due to resistance and suffering losses from the Italian partisans the Germans retaliated by acts of reprisals including massacring civilians. However on the 2nd August Kesselring ordered the city to be abandoned so that it could not be damaged by any fighting and the German forces left the city on the 4th August.
The burials at the war cemetery in Florence are for those men who died during the fighting in the Apennine Region durin July, August and September 1944
John Duncan and Reginald George Woodcock were 1st cousins as their father's were brothers. Herbert and Christopher's father was John Woodcock and in 1911 John was living with Herbert's family at Cemetery Lodge.
No photos