Rank: Private

Date of Death: 13/03/1944

Regiment/Service: Home Guard
22nd County of Lancaster (Rochdale) Bn. LANCASHIRE

Grave Reference: North of church.

Cemetery: St James Christleton Churchyard Section 4 K10

Additional Information:
Son of William and Martha Woolley of Christleton ; husband of Dorothy May Woolley, of Rochdale. Lancashire. He is buried together with his parents Wiliam & Martha Wooley, a well established Christleton family. William died on active service.

The Home Guard/ Local Defence Volunteers or LDV, or in slang, Look-Duck-Vanish, hence the name change was a defence organisation of the British Army during the Second World War. 

Operational from 1940 until 1944, the Home Guard—comprising 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, usually owing to age, hence the nickname 'Dad's Army' — acted as a secondary defence force, in case of invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany and their allies.

The Home Guard guarded the coastal areas of Britain and other important places such as airfields, factories and explosives stores.

Lancashire raised 71 battlions of the Home Guard as well as numerous Heavy anti-aircraft units and Light anti-aircraft units, also Home Guard Transport Columns, And Women's Home Guard units, Railway battalions, Post Office battalions.

Units of the Home Guard were affiliated to and administrated by their local Territorial Army Association, and it was stipulated that each unit should wear the cap badge of the county in which it was raised. Edward’s Cap Badge was the Lancashire Fusiliers