Remembering …
Originally published on October 10, 2019.
The re-imagined story …
I was coming out of my apprenticeship in August 1914 and I knew I would soon be out of a job. They were laying men off at the Works and wouldn’t be taking on any newly qualified boilermakers.
Then England declared war on Germany and I enlisted with the Wiltshire Regiment the following week.
That was my reason for joining up. Other men had other reasons. Many enlisted because it was the right thing to do, God was on our side. Some joined up to be with friends and family. Others saw it as an opportunity to travel beyond the confines of Swindon and see a bit of the world and anyway, it would all be over by Christmas, that’s what everyone believed.
My mate Norman Lynes didn’t have an option. He had previously served with the Middlesex Regiment and was on the reserve list. Perhaps he had a different attitude to warfare, having already experienced it. I doubt whether he had a different attitude to being killed. We all wanted to come home. He wouldn’t have been any different.
Norman was reported missing following the attack on ‘Bully Wood’ during the Somme offensive in September 1916. Everyone knew what that meant; he had been killed in action, yet his death wasn’t confirmed until a year later – a year later! Then his mother placed a plaque on his father’s grave. It’s quite worn now; you can still read the words taken from his last letter home.
There’s no victory without sacrifice.
I didn’t want to make that sacrifice and I bet Norman didn’t want to either.
The facts …
Frederick Jesse Lynes married Ann Glover at St Mary de Lode, Gloucester on August 23, 1877. By the time of the 1881 census Frederick and Annie were living at 34 Catherine Street, Swindon with their daughter Maud aged 2 and five months old Frederick John.
Frederick was employed as a Steam Engine Maker and Turner at the GWR Works and by 1891 the family was living at 23 Carr Street, their home for more than twenty years. Their youngest child Norman was born there in 1892 and baptised at St Mark’s Church on February 22, 1892.
Frederick died in December 1904 and was buried on December 15 in grave E7187, a plot he shared with his mother Caroline who had died eleven years earlier. On his headstone is inscribed ‘for 25 years a member of St Mark’s Church choir.’
Frederick and Ann’s son Norman enlisted with the British Army at Hornsey on September 11, 1914. His attestation papers reveal that he had previously served in the 10th Middlesex and that his time had expired. He was 23 years and 11 months and a tall man, standing 6ft 2 and a half inches. With a chest measurement of 36 inches his physical development was described as good.
Norman served in Gibraltar and Egypt for seventeen months before being posted to France where he served for four months. On October 22 he was officially declared missing and on July 26, 1917 it was accepted that he was dead, his death assumed on or since September 1, 1916.
TF/200776 Private Lynes (1/7th Middlesex Regiment) name appears on the Thiepval Memorial Pier and Face 12D and 13B.
On September 20, 1921 Annie took receipt of her son’s medals – the 1914-15 Star and the British War & Victory Medals.
The 1/7th Battalion Middlesex Regiment served with the 167th Brigade, 56th (London) Division. They were on the Somme before the battle and helped dig assembly trenches near Hebuterne. On 1st July 1916 they were in reserve for the attack on Gommecourt. They trained with tanks in August 1916 near Abbeville and fought in the battles for Leuze Wood and Bouleaux Wood in September 1916. In one attack with the tanks on 15th September 1916 they lost over 300 men out of 500 who took part in the attack on ‘Bully Wood’. In October 1916 they fought at Spectrum Trench near Lesboeufs suffering nearly 200 casualties.
Thiepval Memorial published courtesy of CWGC
Radnor Street Cemetery 
Great reading this story, Thanks
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