bringing the wood
It seems to me that a blunt heat shield is a well proven technology, as are parachutes and parafoils. While I don't know of any heat shields that have used water, it seems like a good idea to test. The Russians are testing an inflatable heat shield and the earliest Chinese recoverable satellites reportedly used wooden heat shields (I kid you not).
I think the wood was probably used more as an ablative coating although it no doubt shielded a bit. The Nazi V2 also used wood as an ablative heatshield, at some point in development.