John Alfred Gaunt was born on 15th October 1893, the fourth of five children to John and Jane Gaunt. John Sr was a cattle dealer from St Ives in Huntingdonshire, and it was in the nearby village of Needingworth that the family were born and raised.

John Sr sought out opportunities to support his wife and children and, in 1902 he moved the family to Canada, settling in Pincher Creek, Alberta. There isn’t a great deal of detail available about the Gaunts’ time in North America, but it is likely that farming became their way of life.

Tragedy struck the family in October 1912, when John Sr died, at the age of 61. By this point it seems that they had moved on to British Colombia. Just six months later, Jane also died, John Jr was left an orphan while still a teenager.

Most of the family seemed to remain on the west coast – a later document shows John’s older sister Julia living in Cranbrook, British Colombia – but John was working as a farmer by this point and had either returned to Pincher Creek after his parents’ deaths, or had remained there when they went west.

When war broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914, the Empire were called upon to serve, and John was to return to the country he had left more than a decade earlier. He enlisted on 20th January 1916, joining the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Private Gaunt’s service records show that he was 5ft 8ins (1.72m) tall, 130lbs (59kg) in weight and had light brown hair, blue eyes and a fresh complexion. It was also noted that he had a fine scar, some 3.5ins (9cm) long, on his upper left arm and had a slight defect in his speech (although this is not elaborated on).

John departed for Europe on 21st August 1916, boarding the HMS Olympic for Liverpool, Lancashire. His unit was initially based in Witley Camps near Aldershot, Hampshire, and he would remain on base until the end of the year. This included eight weeks admitted to the Connaught Hospital, when he was suffering from a bout of syphilis.

By January 1917, John was transferred to the 21st Reserve Battalion, which meant a move to Seaford, East Sussex. He transferred again to the 50th Battalion on 19th March, a move which included being shipped off to France.

Over the next couple of months, things were to change dramatically for Private Gaunt. His service records note that he was wounded on 10th May, but that he remained on duty. On 21st July, he wad admitted to the No. 11 Ambulance Station in Rouen, suffering from jaundice.

He was medically evacuated to Britain for treatment, initially to the Auxiliary Hospital in Exeter, Devon, then to Uplyme Hospital, just to the north of Lyme Regis. By this point, John was severely ill. He passed away on 13th August 1917, at the age of 23 years of age.

With the majority of his family living on the other side of the Atlantic, John Alfred Gaunt was, instead, laid to rest in the churchyard of Ss. Peter & Paul Church in Uplyme, not fat from where he had breathed his last. He is also among those servicemen to be commemorated on the Pincher Creek War Memorial.

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