Fredman Ashe Lincoln

Fredman Ashe Lincoln was born in Bradford, a son of Reuben Lincoln, who was first a minister and then a solicitor, and was educated at Hoe Grammar School, Plymouth, Haberdashers’ Aske’s School, London, and then Exeter College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1929 and took silk in 1947.
His sojourn in Plymouth enhanced his love of the sea. He joined the RNVR in 1937 and attended navigational training classes at night school and at weekends to qualify for his yachtmaster’s certificate. He joined the Royal Navy as a sub-lieutenant when the Second World War began in 1939. His book Secret Naval Investigator (1961) is a thrilling story of his exploits in the detection of mines and torpedoes. A second book of his, published earlier this year, is entitled Odyssey of a Jewish Sailor.
In the early days of the war he served in minelayers. He transferred to minesweepers and helped in the recovery of one of the first magnetic mines. For this he was mentioned in dispatches. He then volunteered for the commandos and took part in the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy. He was again mentioned in dispatches during the landings at Salerno.
He later served during the North West Europe campaign and was one of the first British officers to cross the bridge at Remagen on the Rhine – the only Rhine bridge left standing after the Germans had blown up the others. It had been brilliantly captured, before it could be demolished, by the US First Army which was as a consequence, able to establish the first Allied bridge-head on the east bank of the river.
Lincoln was national chairman of the Association of Jewish ex-Service Men and Women in 1948 and 1949, and again in 1952, when he accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh