58443: Christmas card from Fred Lynn to his mother

Embroidered Christmas card, printed on the back "Fabrication Francaise" The tiny card inside the pocket reads "A Joyful Christmas"

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.