Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Fred was born in the Manningham area of Bradford in July 1886. He was the eldest of three children of Harry Woodhead and Emma Jane Holroyd and was their only son. When they married Harry was a
salesman, perhaps for his father who was a draper and hatter, while Emma was a velvet weaver. In the 1890s Harry built up a merchant tailor’s business which in 1912 had three branches in Bradford. After being educated at one of the city schools, Fred went to Bradford Grammar School in September 1900 when he was fourteen. He was at the School for a
year, in Form Third Modern. He was an average pupil who did well in Chemistry and English. After school he worked for his father. In the 1911 Census he was listed as a ‘Tailor and Clothier’, and in the next year when he married as ‘Tailor Master’. He married Mabel Hayward, also from Manningham and whose father was a bank manager, at the Salem Congregational Church on Oak Lane in April 1912. They lived at 7 Leylands Lane, where their only child
Barbara was born a year later in April 1913.
Fred was twenty-eight shortly before the outbreak of war. He did not volunteer, but in
November 1915 under the ‘Derby Scheme’ which began the move
towards compulsory service, he attested his willingness to serve when called upon. He chose the 28th Battalion London Regiment (Artists’ Rifles), a socially exclusive unit which attracted men from the public schools and universities. Recruits needed to be recommended and paid a fee, and many became officers. It was an unusual choice since Fred had attended neither, and at B.G.S. he came tenth in Art. He possibly wished to avoid serving with men of
lower social status. The call came a year later and on 13th November he reported for duty at Halifax. His medical inspection shows he was 5 feet 4 inches tall and of moderate build. After three months’ basic training he joined his battalion in France in late February 1917.
Although the Artists’ Rifles had been in France since April 1915, they had enjoyed a quiet war as an Officer Training unit. Woodhead joined ’A’ Company at Hesdin, near Boulogne. This was soon to change. In July the battalion became part of 190th Brigade and went into the front line near Arras to gain experience, then moved north to Ypres in October. On the 30th at 5.50 a.m. it attacked in knee-deep mud alongside the Canadians near Passchendaele village. It was held up by close-range machine guns and lost 334 men, half its fighting strength. Fred survived, and as the remnant rested and refitted he was promoted to Lance Corporal, unpaid. In December the battalion moved to the Cambrai sector where a German
counter-attack had negated earlier British success. At 6.30 a.m. on the 30th, dressed in white camouflage suits and spearheaded by flame throwers, the Germans launched a surprise attack in snow south of Marcoing. The Artists’ Rifles’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies were hurried forward from reserve to counter-attack at 11.15 a.m. without artillery support. They did not reach their objective and suffered more than one hundred casualties. Woodhead was one of the wounded who lay out in bitter cold until they were recovered at night. He died the next day at a dressing station at Villers-Plouich, where he was buried. The artist John Nash took part in the attack and later painted the scene. ‘It is in fact pure murder’, he wrote, ‘and I was lucky to escape untouched…It was bitterly cold and we were easy targets against the snow and in daylight. I think the vivid memory of the occasion helped me when I painted the picture …’ Mabel Woodhead never re-married and died in Leeds in 1961. Fred’s daughter Barbara also remained single and died in 2000.'