Huntley Lindsay

Three WWII medals awarded to 253523 Flight Lieutenant Huntley Edward Lindsay came to me from the WA Police Force. Huntley was from a prominent family in the Greenbushes area of WA. I found several newspaper articles about Huntley from the 1930s but very little about his RAAF service during WWII or in the years following the war. 

I had to put a lot of fragments of information together and then make some assumptions about Huntley's family construct. Once I got to what I assumed was the solution I was able to retrace my research steps and satisfy myself that I had a 95% answer.

Huntley had a daughter, Suzette, who attended Methodist Ladies College in Claremont. She finished high school in 1963. My family will realise the MLC connection although Suzette started at MLC after Gail had finished. It took quite a bit of searching to narrow down that Suzette married Keith Moylan but after 1980 the trail went very cold. Eventually I found Suzette's death notice which gave the first names of her daughter and son. However, even this information didn't lead to immediate success. The only trace of Suzettte's son that I found was on a closed Face Book ocean yacht race page. By pure chance, a friend of mine is a member of the same closed group so I asked for a message to be passed to Huntley's grandson. I received an email overnight confirming the connection and was pleasantly surprised to find out that the grandson's middle name is Huntley. 

There are two other aspects of this search that are worth noting. The medals were issued in the 1970s. This can be determined by they way they are hand engraved rather than impressed. This was standard for RAAF medals that were issued in that time period. Secondly, Huntley's elder brother, Norman William John Lindsay was killed in action at the Somme on 24 July 1918. 

Thanks to Ian G who passed my message to the Moylan family. The returned medal tally is now 2523.