South Yorkshire Times, August 26th, 1944
Wombwell Home-Coming
Had To Be Introduced to Daughter
“It’s great to see England again. It’s like a dream coming true. There is no place like the old country. I never thought I should see it again.” These were the remarks of Driver Stanley Lindley (29), R.A.S.C. on arriving home at 20, Milton Street, Wombwell, for a well-earned leave after four years around the Mediterranean and the North African Desert.
To greet him were his wife and eight-years-old daughter, Pauline. Pauline had grown out of his memory and with many children around he had to enquire which was which. The people of Milton Street gave him a marvellous reception, flagging the throughfare from top to bottom. Stanley said it looked as though the war was over.
With him in the same convoy was his brother, Corpl. Cecil Lindley (33) R.E.M.E. who lives at Cemetery Road, Wombwell but neither knew it until they had got home. Cecil has been in Italy, the Western Desert and Palestine for four years.
They are sons of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lindley, 119, Doncaster Road, Denaby Main. Having previously served in the Dragoon Guards, Driver Stanley Lindley was recalled two days before the war started. In the meantime, he had worked as a bus driver for Burrows and Sons of Wombwell. Within a week he was in France and had a rough time at the withdrawal from Dunkirk.
After a short stay in this country, he was sent to the Middle East and this is his first leave. His first job was to collect vehicles from the dock at Alexandria and he was then sent to Greece carrying bombs and munitions to a squadron operation on the Albanian frontier. They were among the first 500 British troops landed in Greece and only 40 of 150 of them got out again, having waited in the olive groves for four days and nights before they could get aboard. The ship they should have been evacuated by was sunk, but the Navy eventually took them off at two in the morning. They were bombed and strafed all the way to Alexandria.
Arriving back in Egypt he was pushed into the Syrian campaign, being attached to the Australians carrying munitions attached to their 25 pounder guns. Then back to Egypt and up the desert with an American trailer on test. At Sidi Rezegh he picked up a German Mark 4 tank which eventually went to America as a show-piece. Tank and trailer made a load of 80 to 90 tons and together were too heavy to go over the bridges.
Supplying Desert Patrols
He was in the retreat from Gambia and then went to Wadi Haifa and Khartoum, serving with a native company supplying long range desert patrols. One of his journeys was a 25 days trek to Kufra covering hundreds of miles of trackless desert. “The conditions in the Nubian desert,” he said “have to be seen to be believed. There are no roads whatever and for hundreds of miles not the slightest sign of vegetation. We travelled by sun and compass and frequently had to use the sand-trays to get over the huge sand dunes. The only people we met were Arab nomads. Nobody knew where they had come from or where they were going. To get lost there was to die of hunger and thirst.” Driver Lindley witnessed the turn of the tide against the Germans at El Alamein and his verdict on that phase of the war is that the Germans cannot stand up against the British when they are equally matched. All they had lacked hitherto was the “tackle.”
He had a trip to Lake Chad and then spent 19 months in the neighbourhood of Tobruk from which point he commenced his trip home. For three years he has served as a tank transport driver and a vehicle mechanic to a Sudan Defence unit. Remarking that he had been very lucky, Driver Lindley said he had suffered “nothing worse” than a fractured skull and a broken nose. That occurred when he was a dispatch rider doing convoy at Athens. He swerved to avoid a little girl and went over the handlebars.
Driver Lindley and his brother were members of the choir at their church at Denaby Main before moving to Wombwell. Immediately after arriving home he attended Holy Communion at Wombwell Parish Church where he is a member. “I want to thank the people of the street for the marvellous reception they have given me,” he said. He has brought back many interesting souvenirs and photographs.