Canadian Badge

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Oswald Hardie Allan was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 2nd October 1889, the third child of commercial traveller Thomas David Allan and his wife of nine years, Elisabeth (nee Hardie), his older siblings were Alexander and Elsie. In 1891 the family lived at Chelsea Grove, Elswick and ten years later had moved to live in The Grove, Longbenton.

On 1st May 1909 Oswald arrived in Canada having sailed from Liverpool on the SS Corsican, the ship’s manifest indicating that he was a clerk making for Notch Hill, British Columbia. Two years later he was lodging in Calgary and working as a salesman for a grocer, where on 27th August he married Isabella Carr. Originally from Newcastle she had arrived in Canada in June, and their son Hugh William Allan was born on 16th November 1913.

8th March 1915 saw Oswald enlisting with “A” Company, 50th Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force in Calgary and seven months later the battalion sailed for England on the SS Orduna from Halifax to Plymouth, and a posting to camp at Bramshott, Hampshire. At the same time, Isabella and young Hugh sailed from New York to Liverpool to stay with Oswald’s parents in Longbenton.

Appointed Lance Corporal in December 1915, Oswald spent the first half of 1916 in and out of hospital with various ailments, and was in Bramshott Military Hospital in August when his battalion moved to France as part of the 10th Infantry Brigade, 4th Canadian Division. Discharged from hospital he travelled to France in early October as a Private and having spent time with the 4th Entrenching Battalion, joined the 50th in billets at Bouzincourt on 1st November.

Private Allan was reported missing in action on 19th November 1916 after the final Canadian attack of the Somme campaign, when the Regina Trench at Courcelette was finally captured. His remains were located a year later, when he was officially declared to have been killed in action.

Isabella returned to Calgary in June 1917, remarried there two years later and died in 1958.

Oswald Allan is remembered in Longbenton on L25.02

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Allan