John Searle

John Searle was born at Denmead in 1874 and later became closely connected with Hambledon through work and family life. He married Emily Jessie Searle of Church Lane, Hambledon and before the First World War the couple lived with his parents at Soberton, sharing the family home after his return from military service overseas.

He had already experienced war long before 1914. Serving in South Africa during the Boer War from 1899 to 1902 with the 1st and 3rd Battalions Scots Guards and possibly also the Imperial Yeomanry, he took part in many of the principal operations of the campaign. The clasps on his Queen’s South Africa Medal recorded a long list of actions – Belmont, Modder River, the Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg and Belfast – tracing the British advance across the Orange Free State and Transvaal as the army moved from open battle into the later guerrilla phase of the war. He was also awarded the King’s South Africa Medal, granted only to those who had completed extended service in the closing stages of the campaign, marking him as a seasoned veteran.

After returning to civilian life he resumed rural work, but when the Great War began he enlisted again, this time in the 2nd Battalion Hampshire Regiment. As a trained former soldier he was considerably older than most recruits and brought previous battlefield experience to the battalion.
In April 1915 the 2nd Hampshires sailed for the Gallipoli campaign. They landed at Cape Helles from the converted collier River Clyde, deliberately run ashore under heavy fire so troops could disembark. The battalion suffered severe casualties in the opening fighting and continued operations around Krithia under extremely difficult conditions.

John Searle was killed in action on 6th August 1915 aged forty one. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Helles Memorial overlooking the Dardanelles. His death occurred during the same week in which several other Hambledon men were lost in the Gallipoli fighting. A veteran of Britain’s earlier imperial war who answered the call to arms once again, he did not return home a second time.

In 1983, his family presented his medals to the Hampshire Regiment Headquarters and Museum in Winchester, Hampshire, preserving the memory of his service.