Charles Louis Woollcombe was born in Devon on 23 Mar 1857. He was the eldest son of Rev. Louis Woollcombe, rector of Petrockstowe, North Devon. His mother was Augusta Rundell Brown. Charles was educated at Marlborough College and joined the army as a cadet at RMC Sandhurst followed by a commission into the 46th Regiment in 1876 and a transfer to the 25th King’s Own Borderers in 1877.
1876 Lieutenant, 11 Oct
1885 Adjutant, 1st Battalion KOSB, 3 Jun
1886 Captain, 1 Apr
1897 Major, 19 May
1898 Lieutenant-Colonel, 20 May
1899 Assistant Adjutant General, India
1901 Colonel, 20 May
1906 Commander of the Allahabad Brigade
1907 Commander of the Garhwal Brigade
1908 Major-General, 18 Apr
1910 Colonel of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 31 Aug
1911 GOC Scottish Command, 19 Mar
1913 Lieutenant-General, December
Lieutenant Woollcombe served with the 2nd Battalion KOSB in the Afghan War of 1878–80, first with the Peshawar Valley Field Force under Lt-General Maude and afterwards with the Khyber Line Force under Lt-General Bright. He was appointed Adjutant of the 1st Battalion in 1885 and in that capacity served in the Chin-Lushai Expedition of 1889–90, and in Brigadier-General Symons’ Burma Column. In 1895 he was Brigade Major to the 2nd Brigade in the Chitral Relief Force under Sir Robert Low.
In May 1897 he was Deputy Assistant Adjutant General for Musketry at Peshawar, serving with the Mohmand Field Force. He was in the Tirah Expedition of 1897–98. He left the regiment to take up a staff job as Assistant Adjutant General in India in 1899, but was sent out to South Africa for the Boer War. He was appointed Colonel of his old regiment, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, on 31 August 1910, an appointment he held for 13 years.
In the First World War he was in command of the 2nd Army in Central France from June 1915 and transferred to the Western Front on 4 July 1916 in command of the 11th (Northern) Division. Later that year he was put in command of IV Corps. By June 1918 he was GOC Eastern Command, and in 1919 appointed Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery. He retired in February 1920 but remained as Honorary Colonel of the KOSB until 23 Sep 1923.
He was married in 1886 to Agnes Meade Murray, daughter of General Sir John Irvine Murray. They had two sons and a daughter. The younger son, Second Lieutenant Charles Stephenson Woollcombe, was in the 2nd Battalion KOSB and was killed in action at La Bassée on 12 Oct 1914. Lieutenant-General Charles Louis Woollcombe died at his home, Chat Moss, Bexhill-on-Sea, on 6 May 1934.
