I struggled with a similar problem and solved it with the following configuration in web.xml of the WAR file exposing my SOAP service:
<!--
The MessageDispatcherServlet is the entry point for all kinds of
SOAP requests. It implicitely loads an application context file
/WEB-INF/<servletname>-servlet.xml if not configured otherwise.
However, as we want component scanning and everything
we configure an own application context and context loader.
Component scanning did not work if relying on the parent
Spring context (the parent context is the one loaded via
ContextLoaderListener). It only works if the default spring-ws
context mechanism is reconfigured to use the application context
in the classes directory. If done so, <import .../> and component
scanning works.
-->
<servlet>
<servlet-name>trxservice</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.ws.transport.http.MessageDispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>transformWsdlLocations</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextClass</param-name>
<param-value>org.jboss.spring.vfs.context.VFSXmlWebApplicationContext</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>classpath:applicationContext-web.xml</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>trxservice</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Hope this helps
Stefan