Monica Lynch, American Red Cross Worker in Australia during WWII

Monica Lynch was an American Red Cross worker in the American Red Cross Service Club which was located in Centenary House on the corner of Exhibition Street and Little Collins Street, Melbourne.

Monica Lynch met her her future husband, Captain Edward Kickham, M.D., on the boat to Australia. Edward Kickham was a battalion medical officer. They were married during the war in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia whilst on leave from New Guinea. They were also based in the Philippines during the war. Monica and Edward Kickham went on to raise nine children.

Jack Heyn, a photographer with the 3rd Bomb Group wrote of his memories of his time in Melbourne:-

Monica Lynch outside the American Red Cross building in Exhibition Street, Melbourne

Monica Lynch outside in Exhibition Street, Melbourne. You can see the
Australian Comforts Fund building across the road in the background.
Note the clock in the background and refer to the photo below.

Is that the same clock which can be seen in the side street. That is the former
American Red Cross Service Club where the Subway shop is now located.

Steps leading down to a public toilet in Melbourne. Note the Gas Producer on the vehicle
beside the toilet. Monica labelled this as a photo of a "Public Johnnie". The large building in the
background is the Hotel Windsor at 111 Spring Street, Melbourne which was built in 1883.

Yarra River in Melbourne. Signs that can be seen in the photograph include Regent
Theatre, Melbourne Ferries, Nicks ? Launches, Ball & Welch, T & G Life

Monica Lynch with Mary Blaschke on 14 July 1944 at the 227th Station Hospital Red Cross Recreation Hall

From Saginaw
To San Tomas

That's Trail For Saginaw
Red Cross Worker, Monica
Lynch Kickham.

MANILA - It's a. long way from Saginaw, Michigan, to the Santo Tomas internment camp here, but that's the trail Mrs. Monica Lynch Kickham followed after joining the overseas staff of the American Red Cross 18 months ago, and it hasn't been the shortest line between two points.

Together with ten other Red Cross workers, Mrs. Kickham, who met Captain Edward F. Kickham aboard ship en route to Australia 16 months ago and married him in Sydney a year later, was flown here from Leyte by the army to assist with civilian relief.

As assistant at the Red Cross message and information counter inside the main entrance of the huge internment camp, formerly a university building, Mrs. Kickham is busy all day long sorting and delivering mail to liberated internees, forwarding messages to evacuated prisoners of War, handing out comfort articles and reading matter, and attempting to answer the thousand-and-one questions asked by people cut off from the rest of the world for three years.

"Though soap was extremely scarce, the internees somehow managed to keep themselves clean and their clothes neat," observed the Red Cross woman, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James J. Lynch, 5347 Genesee, Saginaw, and former executive secretary to the Michigan agent of the Gulf Refining Company.

Upon her arrival in the southwest Pacific, Mrs. Kickham was assigned as staff assistant at the Red Cross Service Club in Melbourne. Since then she has seen service at an army station hospital and a navy recreation hut in Milne Bay. New Guinea, followed by a brief period as director of the first Red Cross club in the Philippines, established in Tacloban, capital city of Leyte.

Her husband's home is at 657 Chestnut Hill Avenue, Brookline, Mass.

Monica Lynch Kickham at Nichols Field, Manila - First internees from Santa Tomas, Los Banos, and Bilibid Prisons

I'd like to thank Edward F. Kickham and Kathy Kickham who are both children of Monica Lynch Kickham for their assistance with this web page.

I'd also like to thank Jack Heyn and Bruce Buchan for their assistance with this web page.

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