As told by Adelaide’s The Mail, on 11 March 1950, Andrew Veitch Lauchland had looked up from the trenches in France at the planes flying overhead and decided he wanted to join the Australian Flying Corps. While he never received the opportunity, he later became a foundation member of the RAAF in 1921, though would not fly for many years. Lauchland’s aviation career spanned the RAAF and civil aviation was spent as a ground worker and administrator.
In fact, his first flight was by accident, when a plane he was taxiing across the Archerfield aerodrome suddenly took off, though soon afterwards he earned a private flying licence. He witnessed the arrival of Bert Hinkler and Charles Kingsford-Smith to Brisbane, with Hinkler staying at his house. Lauchland’s work took him from Townsville to Adelaide. The Mail’s profile was written in honour of Lauchland leaving Adelaide to become the manager of Mascot airport in Sydney.
Missing from the profile is another potential source of Lauchland’s fascination with the skies, his late elder brother Robert. Robert had been an air-mechanic in the Australian Flying Corp during the war but was killed in action in November 1917.
The brothers also shared a love of soccer, though their pre-war careers are obscured. Lauchland played for the Returned Soldiers after the war, while Robert played for the Depot Signallers base in Chermside against a Brisbane select team side in 1916 before being sent to Europe.
Lauchland enlisted in September 1916, aged 18 and was assigned to the 15th Battalion. He would go on to be awarded the Military Medal in 1919 for “work at Cerisy on 8 August 1918”, when Australian forces retook the village lost during the German Spring Offensive. Later that same month Lauchland was gassed, leading to burns to his thighs. He was discharged in May 1919 and returned to Australia.
Lauchland played soccer for Returned Soldiers in Brisbane and then later with South Brisbane United, Toowong, Thistle and Latrobe during periods he worked in Brisbane. When work took him to Victoria in the early 1920s, he played for Newport as an outside-right. His form saw the Sun News-Pictorial on 27 October 1923 dub him ”Eurythmic of the Newport eleven”, and led to selection for the Victorian state team against the touring Chinese Universities XI.
After a lengthy career in aviation, Lauchland died on 7 March, 1961.