Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

54864 Allan Edward BARTLETT was born on 5 September 1900 at Mount Gambier. He was enrolled at Mount Gambier High School on 21 March 1914 by his father, William Bartlett, timber merchant, of  Charles Street, Mount Gambier. He left the school on 20 November 1914.

He enlisted in Melbourne on 26 March 1918 (19, timber cutter, single, Church of England) naming his father, William Bartlett, of Crouch Street, Mount Gambier as his next of kin. He embarked from  Sydney as a member of the 4th (Victorian) General Service Reinforcements on 5 June 1918 and disembarked in England on 11 August 1918. He was initially attached to the 14th Training Battalion (during which time he was hospitalised with a groin injury in October and a bout of measles in November) and later the 59th Battalion, though without ever seeing combat. Perhaps because of this, he asked to  be discharged in London in June 1919 and joined the Russian Relief Force as a private (193024) in the Machine Gun Corps. This force saw action in support of White Russian forces that attempted  unsuccessfully to defeat the communist Red Army in the Russian Civil War, following the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Published in 'Ours: the origins and early years of Mount Gambier High School and Old Scholars who served in the Great European War' by Graeme Roulstone