Postcard from Fred Lynn to his Mother

Item

Title

Postcard from Fred Lynn to his Mother

Identifier

8812.cpd

Creator

Abstract

Fred wrote
"Dear Mother we got at Lincon [sic] on Sat at 2 oclock and I am getting on all right hope you are the same. From your loving son Fred.

Fred Lynn's story
Fred's story is told here through a number of photographs and post cards that he sent to his mother. She kept them in an album, together with those from his brothers and sisters.

Frederick Lynn was the sixth of 7 surviving children of Sarah Ann and Christmas Lynn. Fred was born in 1896 and brought up in Gedney Hill in south Lincolnshire.

Fred and his brothers Robert and John went to Lincoln to enlist in April 1916.
Robert was not accepted. I don't know if this was because he was not fit or because he was now the head of the household (his father had died in 1915) or because he was a farmer.
Fred enlisted in the Notts and Derby Regiment of the Sherwood Foresters. He became a Lance Corporal in the 15th Battalion and was wounded in 1918.
He was in hospital in Southampton in May 1918 but was discharged and returned to his Battalion. Tragically he was killed on 29th September 1918 and is commemorated on the Memorial at the Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium and on the war memorials in his home village of Gedney Hill.

Fred's brother John Lynn also enlisted but I have no photographs of him and very few postcards to his mother. John survived the war but died in 1918, perhaps in the flu pandemic.

Date

9th April 1916

Date Created

1916-04-09

Source

Postcard

Medium

Card

Type

Postcard

number of pages

7

Contributor

Admin
Jennifer Bangs

Publisher

The Great War Archive, University of Oxford