First pattern RAF trousers : Flying Officer VL Dowling

Royal Air Force officer's first pattern private purchase trousers with cuffs. The trousers, made of saxe blue wool gabardine, are cut high at the back, and have a concealed fly with six brass buttons. Six larger brass buttons are located around the outside of the waistband for the attachment of braces. All the buttons are impressed 'T.R.MARSHALL & CO. JERMYN ST'. Each hip has an internal waist pocket with a vertical slash opening. The waistband is lined with white cotton fabric, as are the pocket linings. A white fabric label sewn inside the vertical rear seam of the trousers gives the makers details 'MARSHALL & CO., 57 & 58 Jermyn St., London, S.W.1', and is marked 'Lt Laidley Dowling Aug 18 RAF' in black ink.

Vincent Laidley Dowling was born at Darlinghurst, NSW, in May 1888. He studied architecture at Sydney University before the First World War, and enlisted in the (British) Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in 1916. After training in the UK, he was posted to France as a Lieutenant in early 1918, serving with Nos 1 and 2 Aircraft Supply Depots. He relinquished his Royal Air Force commission as a Flying Officer in 1921 and returned to Australia, where he and a partner, J D Moore, established an architectural firm in Sydney. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Dowling offered himself for service in the RAAF, and was posted as a flight lieutenant to an aircrew training unit. In January 1941 he was promoted to squadron leader, a rank which he held for the remainder of the war. Dowling was discharged from the RAAF in July 1947. He died in the late 1960s. His younger brothers, Captain Brian Laidley Dowling (22 Squadron RFC) and Lieutenant Max Russell Laidley Dowling (4 Infantry Battalion, AIF) were both killed during the First World War.