Stanley Frederick Gallant

This story is shared by the Trust with kind permission from Mavis Williams, Researcher.

The double love story starts, one in which history would repeat itself. Stanley Frederick Gallant, also known as Bud, was born on the 1st January 1922, the third son of Joe and Ethel Gallant (née Barnes).  Joseph (Joe) Antoine Gallant arrived in England on the S.S Empress of Britain on the 25th of July 1916, and permission for him to marry was granted on the 4th of May 1917. He had fallen in love with Ethel Barnes from Uxbridge.

Joe was born in Canada but in 1916 he joined up to fight in the First World War. He arrived in the UK with the 26th Canadian Infantry Battalion. After being wounded, he was convalescing at the Canadian Convalescent Hospital, Hillingdon House, Uxbridge where he met and married Ethel Barnes who was living in Uxbridge.

After the war ended war, he returned to Canada with Ethel on the SS Cassandra on the 19th August 1919. Stanley was born in Toronto a few years later and went to the Duke of York Public School, Toronto.

They are seen coming to Britain on the SS Ausonia from New York & Halifax to Plymouth and London, disembarking on the 9th March 1936 in London. Included in the names of the British Passengers were Ethel Gallant, Stanley Gallant, Raymond Gallant, Vincent Gallant and John Gallant. The proposed address in the UK was 7, Barnsfield Place, Uxbridge, Middlesex.

I think that these are two of the three brothers who enlisted in the British Army after war broke out. Joseph Antoine Gallant had returned to England with the Canadian Red Cross when war was declared.

It appears that Stanley was living in England when war was declared. The 1939 Register shows he was lodging in the house of the Richefort family at 161, Harefield Road, Uxbridge, Middlesex with one of his brothers, Vincent Gallant.  Stanley was working as a labourer in a Food Production and his brother was a warehouseman for a Food Distributer. Whilst two of his brothers joined the Canadian Army and his father joined the Canadian Red Cross, Stanley enlisted in the British Army, serving first with the Essex Regiment before transferring to the Dorset Regiment. The Uxbridge and West Drayton Gazette of 24 July 1942 reveals history repeating itself as, just like his father, Stanley met and married a local girl, Margaret Withers of Hillingdon, in 1942.

L-R: Margaret's mother, Stanley Gallant, Margaret Gallant (née Withers) and Joseph Gallant, Stanley's father and best man at the wedding

 

After just two years of marriage, Margaret would find herself a widow as Stanley was killed on the 6th June 1944, shortly after his unit landed on Gold Beach on D-Day. Stanley Frederick Gallant was first buried, probably where he fell, at Asnelles-sur-Mer and then reburied on the 15th of November 1944 at the Bayeux British Cemetery where he now lies.

News of his death was published in Toronto's Globe and Mail on 24 July 1944 as his mother had returned to Canada and was living at 244 Brock Avenue.

He is commemorated in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial Book of Remembrance as well as on the British Normandy Memorial.

I believe that Margaret Joan Gallant was to later remarry to Sydney R. Stones in the March quarter of 1946 at Uxbridge and emigrated on the 21st of April 1955 on the ship Ryndam, disembarking at New York, U.S.A. With her was Sydney R. Stones and Gerald Stones, aged 8 years. The obituary for Margaret Stones (née Withers) in the U.S., Obituary Collection, 1930-Current tells us that she died on the 7th of February 2016 at the age of 93 years and was buried in St. Andrews and St. James Cemetery, Orillia, Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada. Her children were Vicki, Gerald, Val and Tracy. Her husband, Sydney R. Stones, had died in 1994.