Page 172 - They Also Served
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success it will rank high in the annals of polar exploration’. By now an internationally renowned explorer, Lindsay wrote an account of the expedition Sledge in 1935 and, the following year, left the army.
Three years later, Lindsay was back in uniform, and the following year acted as an advisor to the ill-fated Norway expedition, for which he was MiD. Posted to 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders in Normandy in July 1944, he commanded them until the end of the war. Awarded a second MiD and the DSO, he wrote about his experiences in So Few Got Through – The Diary of an Infantry Officer. Selected as the Conservative candidate for the new constituency of Solihull, he beat future Labour minister Roy Jenkins in the June 1945 general election.
A hard-working MP, Lindsay campaigned for opportunities for those being demobbed and for German POWs to remain in the UK because of the shortage of skilled labour. Awarded a CBE in 1952 for his services as an MP, he remained on the back benches and was never slow to criticise his own government. He also spoke out against Lord Beaverbrook and the Daily Express, who he accused of having a vendetta against the royal family. In 1957, he bemoaned the mediocrity of MPs and the fact that so many were professional politicians with little life experience yet, in 1962, was rewarded with a baronetcy before standing down at the 1964 election. Sir Martin Lindsay published his final book, The Baronetage, in 1977 and died in Surrey in May 1981.
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