[5] When war was declared on 14 August 1914, he was 15 and serving aboard the training ship HMAS Tingira,[2] which was docked in Rose Bay, Sydney.
[3] When he was eighteen, he survived the Spanish flu pandemic,[2] which killed over fifty of his shipmates on a transport voyage between Cape Town and Sierra Leone.
[2] He retired from the Navy on 30 October 1947,[2] after serving thirty-four years, being granted his war service rank of lieutenant in 1948.
They married on that return trip and sailed to Australia as newlyweds on SS Mariposa,[2] via Hawaii — only twelve days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
[6] Allan was awarded the 80th Anniversary Armistice Remembrance Medal by the Government of Australia in 1999,[2][7] and lived in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon, Victoria, until his death at the age of 106.