Lieutenant-Colonel R.L. Tindall
The Perth Regiment
Westminster Regiment

Considering this officer’s age, I do not believe that he would be able to command a motor battalion successfully under the conditions of intense and prolonged strain involved in mobile operations of an armd formation.

(Confidential report by Maj-Gen. E.L.M. Burns, 5 Feb 1944)

Born on 28 September 1899 in Lennoxville Quebec, Ralph Lockhart Tindall had enlisted as a sixteen-year-old in April 1917 and transferred to the Boy’s Battalion once overseas. By 1918, he had joined the Royal Air Force and was appointed flight cadet a month before the armistice. Back in civilian life, he took out a patent on an early automobile turn signal device and started work for the Imperial Tobacco Company in Montreal in 1932. Commissioned with the Royal Canadian Hussars since 1932, he became second-in-command of the Perth Regiment after mobilization in 1940.

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