George Lindsay

Major-General George Mackintosh Lindsay, (3 July 1880 – 28 November 1956) was a British Army officer who played a prominent role in the development of mechanised forces during the 1920s and 1930s. Lindsay had spent much of the First World War developing doctrine for the use of machine-guns and training specialist units to operate them. After the war, commanding an armoured-car unit in Iraq, he became intrigued by the potential of mechanised warfare techniques. He was an influential figure in the debate around armoured forces during the 1920s and 1930s, working with J.F.C. Fuller on the Experimental Mechanized Force, and commanded the first experimental armoured division in 1934. Retiring just before the Second World War, Lindsay was called out of retirement to command the 9th (Highland) Infantry Division in the first months of the war, following which he worked as a civil defence commissioner and as a representative of the Red Cross during the liberation of Europe.

Early life and career Lindsay was born in 1880, the sixth son of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Gore Lindsay, the Chief Constable of Glamorganshire, and Ellen Sarah Lindsay. His paternal grandmother was the sister of the Earl of Arran, and his maternal grandfather was Charles Morgan, 1st Baron Tredegar. His siblings included Henry (known as "Morgan") (b. 1857), later Colonel of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers; Lionel (b. 1861), who later succeeded his father as Chief Constable; and Walter (b. 1866), who became the High Sheriff of County Kilkenny.

Lindsay was educated at Sandroyd School and Radley College, and in 1898 was commissioned into the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers, a militia unit, in which his brother Henry was already an officer. In January 1900 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Rifle Brigade, a regular infantry regiment, and two months later left Southampton on the SS Umbria to serve with them in South Africa in the Second Boer War. During the war he took part in operations in the Natal, including the action at Laing's Nek, operations in Transvaal July to November 1900, then served with the 13th Battalion Mounted Infantry in the Orange River Colony. He was promoted to lieutenant on 22 February 1901, and mentioned in despatches (including 25 April 1902 "for able and fearless leading in Ermelo district on 26th January 1902" ). Following the end of the war in June 1902, Lindsay left Cape Town with other men of 1st the battalion Rifle Brigade on the SS Orissa, which arrived at Southampton in late October 1902, when the battalion was stationed at Portsmouth. In 1906 he was appointed adjutant of the Customs and Docks Rifle Volunteers (the 15th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers). When the reserve forces were reorganised into the Territorial Force in 1908, he became adjutant of the successor battalion, the 17th London Regiment (Poplar and Stepney Rifles), remaining with the battalion until 1911. During this time, he married Constance Elizabeth Hamilton; their first child died at birth in 1910.

Inter-war years Following the reduction in forces after the end of the war, the Machine Gun Corps units were disbanded and Lindsay attended the Staff College, Camberley in 1920. After leaving Camberley, he was appointed to command an armoured car unit in Iraq. The British forces in Iraq were combined into RAF Iraq Command in 1922, a joint services command aiming to use airpower as the core method of securing the country. Over the following year, manoeuvres and security operations gave Lindsay an early opportunity to experiment with armoured forces working in close co-operation with aircraft for support and resupply. He became a strong proponent of the new ideas of mechanised warfare, seeing it as a new and dominant paradigm in military strategy. and he would continue to rise in the Army, but he would no longer be involved with developing modern fighting doctrine.

However, the Second World War broke out a few months after he had retired. He was recalled to duty and given command of the newly formed 9th (Highland) Infantry Division, a hastily mobilised second-line Territorial unit. He relinquished command in March 1940, and was appointed as a deputy regional civil defence commissioner for the South-West of England. and by the Tank Museum at Bovington.