George Lindsay was the eldest son of Colonel Morgan Lindsay – one of the most prominent sporting country gentlemen in South Wales during the late Victorian and early Edwardian era, and a man who in addition to playing in the 1878 FA Cup Final, played cricket for Breconshire and the South Wales CC.
Like his brothers Claud Frederic Thomas Lindsay (born January 1892) and Archibald Thurston Thomas Linday (born June 1897) he attended Wellington College, and it was whilst he was at the public school in Berkshire that he was chosen to play for the Gentlemen of Glamorgan in their friendly at Christ College, Brecon on 18 and 19 August 1908 against the Usk Valley club. George batted at number three scoring 8 and 4, besides claiming six wickets, but his youthful efforts could not prevent the Usk Valley side winning by nine wickets.
George followed his father – who had fought in the Boer War – into the military ad after leaving Wellington became a cadet at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He passed out from one of the world’s foremost military colleges in 1911 and was amongst the first wave of British troops to sail to France in 1914 with the Royal Field Artillery. In November he was wounded during the Battle of Ypres and briefly retuned to his family home at Ystrad Mynach House to recover, before returning abroad and commanding a battery at Salonika during 1915.
In November 1916 George joined the Royal Flying Corps and, after flying a series of successful sorties over enemy lines in France and Belgium, he was deployed back in Britain in the summer of 1917 to test a series of newly-built and repaired aircraft from the Rolls-Royce factory adjacent to Filton Airport in Bristol. With events on the Western Front poised to move into a decisive stage, his new duties for the War Effort were important in ensuring a decent supply of fit-for-purpose planes. Tragically his work – ironically well away from enemy fire – was to cost George his life as he was killed, together with an air mechanic who was aboard the plane, when it crashed in an accident near Chipping Sodbury on June 25th, 1917.
It was a grievous loss for Colonel Lindsay and his wife, as well as their children living at Ystrad Mynach House, but within nine months, the Lindsay family were dealt two further blows as both Archie and Claud were killed within a week of other on the Western Front.
LINDSAY, George Walter Thomas
Born – Heath House, Llanishen, 29 January 1891.
Died – Chipping Sodbury, 26 June 1917.