Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

2/21 Battalion

Rank - Private

Son of Herbert William and Ellen Martha Allen; Husband of Catherine Avery Allen, of Redcliffs, Victoria, Australia

VX26850 Private Herbert William “Bert” Allen was born at Rutherglen on 26 October 1905, the eldest son of Herbert and Ellen Martha Allen. He had five brothers and sisters and the family lived in Barooga during the 1930’s, where his parents managed the Barooga Hotel for Arthur Allen, who was Bert’s uncle. Arthur had already lost a son during WW1 and was the father of Gordon Allen, a most famous publican of the Barooga establishment. The Allen family had a long and continuous association with the Barooga Hotel which lasted well into the 1970’s. Bert had studied pharmacy but the Depression made it difficult financially so in 1934 he was working on properties in the Sunraysia and it was there that he met his wife, Catherine, who was a school teacher in Cardross, near Mildura. Bert’s brother Jack had told him there was a good-looking teacher working at the Cardross school. Bert and Catherine were married in 1936 and his two daughters, Judy and Sheila were only still infants when Bert enlisted on 14 June1940.

Bert was known by his army mates as “Barooga Bert”. VX26850 Private H.W. Allen was a member of the 2/21st Battalion, the same unit as Allan Watt and Aussie Carr, which was sent to Ambon as a member of “Gull Force”. Of 292 men who were defending the airstrip, 47 were killed in action, and the rest were executed by the Japanese, their mass grave being found after the war. During February 1942 about 530 Australians were marched into a prisoner of war camp on Ambon, and after three and half years of the most brutal and harsh treatment, only 121 had survived malnutrition, typhoid, malaria, beri-beri, leg ulcers and beatings. Nothing was heard from Bert while he was in captivity and it only emerged later that he also died as a prisoner of war, probably from beri-beri on 13 July 1945, at a few months short of his 40th birthday and less than a month before the end of the war.

This was a devastating loss to Catherine and her two little girls, and indeed the extended Allen family. Catherine managed to raise her little girls with the help of a war pension and her teaching career. Catherine’s love for her husband was reflected in the girls, for a father they had known only briefly. The girls visited his grave on Ambon during 1997 and they wrote a booklet titled “Ambon” which details the experience.