701 QMS Walter John James Mant, RAMC

701 Quartermaster-Sergeant Walter John James Mant of the Royal Army Medical Corps, died from enteric fever on the 9th December 1914. He had contracted enteric fever - more commonly known as typhoid fever these days - whilst on active service, and he died in England. He is buried in Folkestone Old Cemetery.

Walter Mant was serving with the 2nd Home Counties Field Ambulance at the time of his death and his number suggests that he had been a Territorial since the unit's formation in April 1908, and had almost certainly served in a volunteer capacity before then.

I have been unable to find a medal index card for Walter Mant and so it looks as though he did not serve overseas. No service record exists, although his small, three line entry in De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour indicates that he was married. A check through the marriage registers shows that he married in Canterbury in the September quarter of 1895. This in turn ties in with the information on Soldiers Died in the Great War which records that he was born in Eastbourne and living in Canterbury when he enlisted.

Walter's bride was Minnie Sunderland and the couple appear on the 1901 census living at 7 Watling Street, Canterbury with their two children - Walter aged three, and Alice, aged one. Walter senior is noted as being 28 years old, a postman by trade. His wife Minnie, was 31 years old, a British Subject born in the USA. I do not have access to the 1911 census but it would seem reasonable to assume that other children followed in the years between 1901 and Walter's untimely death in 1914. If he was 28 in 1901, he would have been about 41 years old in 1914.

Walter and Minnie's son, Walter Gilbert Mant, also served during WW1 and he survived. His pension record notes that he joined the Royal West Kent Regiment at Dover in September 1915, and was discharged in June 1916 as no longer physically fit for war service.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Sources:

Ancestry.co.uk (MIC, WO 364, 1901 Census)
Army Ancestry
Army Service Numbers 1881-1918
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour
Soldiers Died in The Great War