Name
Frederic Holifield Brown
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
01/12/1918
33
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
1882
Honourable Artillery Company
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Wesleyan (Bushey & Oxhey Methodist) Church Memorial, Oxhey
Pre War
Born in 1885 in Bolton, Lancashire, Frederic Holifield Brown was the son of Frederic James Brown and Charlotte Holifield. He was the eldest of seven children, two of whom died during childhood. In 1901 the family was living at St Anne’s-on-Sea near Blackpool.
Frederic qualified as a solicitor and by 1911 he and his family had moved to Hertfordshire. His father, originally a law clerk, was now a polish manufacturer with five of his children living at the family home, ‘Inglewood’, The Avenue, Bushey.
Wartime Service
When war broke out Frederic enlisted as Private 1882 in the Honourable Artillery Company. He served in France from December 1914 until February 1915, when he was severely wounded by a gunshot wound to his face. The incident occurred on 9 February near Kemmel when ‘a bullet entered his face about three quarters of an inch below the right orbit and pierced to the bone through the nasal cavity in front of the left ear’. Following the gunshot wound he was totally deaf in one ear.
On 19 May he was discharged, being no longer fit for service. The medical prior to his discharge found that he was unable to concentrate on any subject for long and his memory was defective. There was some numbness in the side of his face, some facial paralysis and he had some dizziness.
Frederic died in December 1918 after the Armistice during the influenza epidemic at the age of 33. He is commemorated on the Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church Memorial.
Additional Information
Information provided with the kind permission of Bushey First World War Commemoration Project – Please visit www.busheyworldwarone.org.uk.
Acknowledgments
Andrew Palmer
Dianne Payne - www.busheyworldwarone.org.uk, Jonty Wild
