Description
Title: John Hugh Allen of the Gallant Company
Author: Montgomery, Ina
Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1919
ISBN: N/A
Cover: Hard Cover without Dust Jacket – 236 pages
Comments: After joining the Inns of Court O.T.C., the author obtained a commission in the Worcester Regiment and trained with them for a few months. He was then attached to the Essex Regiment and left for the Dardenelles with them, landing at Cape Helles on 25 May.
“A very gallant act”
He was killed in action 12 days later. Meanwhile back home in New Zealand his father Sir James Allen, Minister for Defence, was organising and launching the New Zealand Expeditionary Force to take part in the same campaign that claimed his son’s life.
General Richardson wrote to Sir James with the details of his son’s death, saying that he had attempted, with another officer, to stop the fall back of troops as they were being bombed out of various trenches.
He wrote “I am pleased to be able to tell you that he died doing a very gallant act, which under the circumstances required considerable courage, as it is almost certain death to put one’s head above the parapet, there to get out as he did and endeavour to get men forward required a cool head and a brave heart” (John Hugh Allen of the Gallant Company, p203).
He is commemorated in New Zealand by a stained glass window in the Anglican Church of All Saints Dunedin.
