Allen Harris Pickering

28/4/18 France. ALLAN HARRIS PICKERING 3700A
Allen Pickering was born in Redfern, Sydney in 1893 to Charles Pickering & Ruth Harris. His father was a School Teacher & in 1902 they were living in Baradine where his mother (who died aged 37) is buried. Allen worked as a grazier/ farmer at “Ringwood”, Binnaway & at the time of his war service his father was teaching & living at “Home Rule” near Gulgong.
Allen enlisted into the Australian Imperial Forces on the 2nd of April 1917 at age 24. He left Australia on the 10th of May 1917 on the HMA “Marathon” which sailed to England & then he was sent to Le Havre, Northern France & sent to the battlefield in November 1917. He served as a Private in the 45th Battalion & was killed, along with others, by a shell which landed in the trench he was in at on the front line just outside of Villiers, Bretonne in France on the 28th of April 1918 aged 25. He was buried 1 mile from where he was killed & subsequently reburied in the Adelaide British Cemetery in France in 1918. He was posthumously awarded the 1914/15 Star, War & Victory Medals & had been mentioned in Dispatches. He was survived by his sister Jessie Pickering & his father died in Mudgee in 1935.
His family suffered greatly as he had 3 cousins, all brothers-( sons of Alfred Whalan), die in The First World War as well – they were Glyndwr Montague Whalan who died on Gallopoli Hill in August 1915 aged 26- he had worked as a farmer, Arthur Harper Whalan died in France in 1916 at Somme, he worked as a Miner at Oberon & Richard Percy Whalan , a tram conductor , who did at Hervillers, France in September 1918 & they also has a cousin Percy Dainsfield die at the same time. (Notes from Elizabeth Cutts)