1. Major Allan Ebenezer Ker VC was a British Army officer and a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
12 Facts About Allan Ker
1. 2.
Allan Ker was born in Edinburgh on 5 March 1883 the son of Robert Darling Ker WS and his wife Johanna Johnston.
3.
Allan Ker then studied law at the University of Edinburgh.
4.
In 1914 he went to Aberdeen to settle the affairs of his cousin, Captain Arthur Milford Ker who had been killed in the first weeks of the First World War and Allan was persuaded to join his cousin's regiment; the Gordon Highlanders.
5.
Allan Ker was 35 years old, and a lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, The Gordon Highlanders, British Army, attached 61st Battalion, Machine Gun Corps during the First World War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
6.
Allan Ker then stayed at his post with a sergeant and several men who had been badly wounded, beating off bayonet attacks with revolvers, the Vickers gun having been destroyed.
7.
Allan Ker was captured in the event and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war only being released in December 1918, a few weeks after the armistice of 11 November 1918.
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Allan Ker was gazetted for the VC on 4 September 1919 and was presented the medal personally by King George V at Buckingham Palace on 26 November 1919.
9.
Allan Ker was demobbed in 1922 and went back to practising law, but in London rather than Edinburgh.
10.
Allan Ker died at New Garden Hospital in Hampstead, North London, on 12 September 1958 aged 75.
11.
Allan Ker is buried in West Hampstead Cemetery but was memorialised in 2018 on his parents' restored grave in Grange Cemetery in south Edinburgh.
12.
Allan Ker's VC is on display in the Lord Ashcroft Gallery at the Imperial War Museum, London.