WWII group of 4 - Bill Woods

Even though it took less than two hours from the start of this research until I was able to identify a family member to contact, that short period of time belies some of the genealogy tricks I had to pull off to get a result.

The WWII group awarded to NX98941 William John Woods was hand delivered to my place yesterday by Iain R-E. Initially, I had difficulty working out who exactly Bill was as there were multiple people by this name in the electoral rolls and the year of birth on WWII nominal roll didn't line up with the NSW BDM records. There was also very little public information about Bill and the only additional information I could find from his war time service was this photo (copyright expired) on the AWM web site.

Description

Tarakan Island. 19 July 1945. Members of No 2 Gun Detachment, 53 Anti Aircraft Regiment (composite) going through their gun drill. Known to be in the photograph are: NX132493 Bombardier E. R. Vincent, NX106736 Gunner (Gnr) F. J. Maher, NX140393 Gnr Britton, NX172041 Gnr J. Cook, NX132498 Gnr P. J. Staines, NX146347 Gnr Kelly, NX98941 Gnr Woods, NX137392 Gnr Doolan, and NX144262 Gnr G. J. Muller.

The only other piece of information I found to be usable was his NOK was listed as Grace Woods. What I didn't know was if this was his mother, sister or wife. Through a process of elimination (read looking at the  I narrowed down a William Woods who was the son of Leslie Francis Woods and Grace Ross. 

This wasn't conclusive so I looked at the other children of Leslie and Grace to try to find confirmation. This came in the form of the death notice of Francis Leslie Woods which named all his siblings including 'Bill'. By cross checking all the names I became convinced I had the right William. I then found a death notice for Bill which also listed all the same siblings, his wife Daisy, daughter Joan, son in law Lance and the names of three grandchildren. Francis also served in WWII.

The rest was quite simple. I located two of Bill's grandchildren via social media and within a couple of hours of sending off a message I was talking to Graham. I'm told by Graham that he last saw the medals about 10 years ago but due to a set of circumstances didn't think he would see them again. I'll send Bill's medals back to his family in the very near future.

Thanks Iain for taking a detour from your trip to Canberra to safe hand deliver these medal.

The returned medal tally is now 2692.