*A Great War ‘Mons’ Trio and Memorial Plaque awarded to Private George Waldo Allan, 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, a medical student at Glasgow University, whose death on 17 May 1915 at Richebourg L’Avoué, being killed by shellfire beside his close friend and companion Hugh Macpherson, was commemorated in the Greenock Telegraph of 25 May 1915 under the title ‘Two Glasgow Highlanders’ comprising: 1914 Star (3310 Pte G.W. Allan. 9/High: L.I.); British War and Victory Medals, 1914-1919 (3310 Pte. G.W. Allan. High. L.I.); Memorial Plaque (George Waldo Allan); Medals held in a handsome, contemporary, glazed bronze and brown velvet frame, also offered with original slip, two small silver snuff / cigarette boxes (one engraved George Waldo Allan 1914), and a small heart-shaped gold pendant, 34.5mm width, set with two small pearls, bearing the portraits of both Allan and Macpherson, and their birthdates, the reverse engraved ‘They saved others / themselves they could not save / at Richebourg L’Avoué / 17th May, 1915’, metal marked ‘15’, in original fitted case; Medals as struck, silver boxes somewhat worn with slight damage in parts, the latter pendant extremely fine (5). Private George Waldo Allan was born on 31 August 1894, the son of the Reverend Charles Allan of Finnart United Free Church, and his wife Margaret. He was educated at Glasgow Academy and at Glasgow University where he studied Medicine whilst part of the Officer Training Corps, and had successfully passed his second professional examination in Medicine. He and his close friend Hugh Macpherson had both joined the 9th ‘Glasgow Highlanders’ Battalion of the H.L.I. and saw service on the Western Front in 1914-15. Letters from the battalion’s officers regularly stated that George Allan performed great service ‘repeatedly rendering assistance to the wounded under fire and at great risk to himself’ adding also that ‘in F Company, whenever a man got hurt, the message went up the line ‘Pass the word for George Allan’’. The ‘Greenock Telegraph’ of Tuesday 25 May, 1915, recorded the events as follows: ‘IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED. Two of our Greenock Boys laid down their lives in Northern France on Monday the 17th of May, they were both in a party which had the honour to be detailed off to go out with the first line of the attacking force on the first day of the attack in the recent forward movement at Richebourg… they had survived the attack, had been relieved by a fresh force and were resting with five comrades in reserve trenches when two high explosive shells fell in rapid succession on their ‘dug out’ and all were instantaneously killed…The two friends now lie side by side…behind the British Line at Richebourg.’

Estimate: GBP 300 - 400