BORN LOUTH 1893. SON OF WILLIAM & HELEN L GAUNT WHO LATER MOVED TO BRADFORD. 1918 VOTERS. EMPLOYED BY MESSRS, HUDSON & SMITHS, WHOLESALE DRAPERS, MARKET PLACE, HULL. ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS, SEPTEMBER 1914. SERVED IN EGYPT AND IN FRANCE, FOR TWO YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS. KILLED IN ACTION, JUST DAYS PRIOR TO HOME LEAVE, ON 03/08/1918, AGED 25. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL, ON 13/08/1918. *
HIS BROTHER, SYDNEY GAUNT, WAS A DISCHARGED SOLDIER, WHO LOST HIS LEG IN THE WAR. HIS STEP BROTHER, PRIVATE, HAROLD HOUGHTON, WAS ALSO KILLED IN FRANCE, ON 28/06/1918.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE, WILLIAM MEREDITH GAUNT 11/954. Born in Louth, Lincolnshire in April 1893, William was one of eight children to William and Helen Gaunt of 22 Sykes Street, Hull. A Warehouseman before the war he enlisted at City Hall on Thursday 10th September 1914 joining the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. One of the Originals he served in Egypt before arriving in France in March 1916. He served on the Somme, at Oppy Wood and Arras and was gassed in January 1918 hospitalised for a couple of months before the German Spring Offensive struck and the war took a further turn for the worst. William was killed in action on 3rd August 1918, having been almost four years a soldier in the worst war then known to mankind. He is buried in Le Grand Hasard Military Cemetery; he was 25 years old. His half-brother, Harold Foster Houghton had been killed in action on 28th June 1916.
