Victory Medal : Second Lieutenant A H Searle, 67 (Aust) Squadron, Royal Flying Corps

Victory Medal. Impressed around edge with recpient's details.

Second Lieutenant Archibald Henry Searle was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1888. He was working as a clerk when he enlisted in the AIF on 11 August 1915. He was allocated to the Australian Army Pay Corps with the rank of sergeant and service number 88. Searle embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Anchise on 26 August with the 4th Reinforcements. In Egypt, he was admitted to the First Australian General Hospital, Heliopolis suffering slight Psoriasis on 5 March 1916.

Searle was promoted to temporary staff sergeant on 1 September 1916 while serving with 1 Army Pay Corps. On 29 January 1917 he was detached for an course at the Imperial School of Instruction, Cairo. He became attached to the No. 3 School of Military Aeronautics and the 58th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps concurrently on 12 April in Abbassia, Cairo. He was appointed second lieutenant on 1 May and transferred to 22 Reserve Squadron, RFC, Aboukir on 3 May before transferring to 23 Reserve Squadron RFC on 13 May.

Searle transferred to the School of Aerial Gunnery, qualifying as a pilot on 31 May and was posted to the 5th Wing, 67 (Aust) Sqn, RFC (later re-titled 1 Squadron Australian Flying Corps in January 1918). He was officially taken on strength on 12 June. Searle only served with the squadron for a month before he was reported missing, believed killed, on 13 July.

On 14 July 1917 Oberleutnant Gerhard Felmy, serving with Fliegerabteilung 300, flying an Albatros D.III fighter, dropped a message on the Aerodrome at Deir-el-Belah. The message stated that biplane 7133, flown by Searle, had been shot down the previous day and that both officers in the aircraft were dead. Searle was said to have been shot in the head, the wing of the biplane had broken and the plane crashed to the ground, killing the other occupant, Lieutenant Gerald Lewis Paget. The report stated they were buried with full military honours by the enemy.

A report given by Major Richard Williams, Officer Commanding, 67 (Aust) Sqn RFC, to a board of enquiry on 6 September 1917 stated that 'On 13 July 1917 this Officer (Searle) left the Aerodrome at Deir-el-Balah on a reconnaissance of Beersheba and Irgeig, flying a B.E.2 E. with a passenger. Lieutenant G. L. Paget, 17th Northumberland Fusiliers and accompanied by another B.E.2E. When in the vicinity of Bir-Ifteis, Palestine, the machine flown by 2nd/Lieutenant Searle was attacked by a hostile machine, the port side wing was seen to fold up and the machine crashed to the ground, and was surrounded by Turkish Cavalry.' The hostile machine is believed to have been a Rumpler C.I flown by Leutnant Schmarjie and Leutnant Fritzsche of Fliegerabteilung 300.

The location of Searle's body was not recovered after the war and grave site is unknown. His name is commemorated on Panel 60 of the Jerusalem Memorial, Jerusalem War Cemetery, Israel.