GUYOT, Claude William Edward
| Service Number: | 3768 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 6 August 1915, Holsworthy, NSW |
| Last Rank: | Private |
| Last Unit: | 3rd Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia, 24 August 1895 |
| Home Town: | Parramatta, New South Wales |
| Schooling: | Parramatta Public School, Lidcombe Public School, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation: | Fitter |
| Died: | Killed in Action, France, 22 July 1916, aged 20 years |
| Cemetery: |
No known grave - "Known Unto God" |
| Memorials: | Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Haymarket NSW Government Railway and Tramway Honour Board, Parramatta Superior Public School Great War Honour Board, Villers-Bretonneux Memorial (Australian National Memorial - France) |
World War 1 Service
| 6 Aug 1915: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Private, 3768, 3rd Infantry Battalion, Holsworthy, NSW | |
|---|---|---|
| 30 Dec 1915: | Involvement Private, 3768, 3rd Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '7' embarkation_place: Sydney embarkation_ship: HMAT Medic embarkation_ship_number: A7 public_note: '' | |
| 30 Dec 1915: | Embarked Private, 3768, 3rd Infantry Battalion, HMAT Medic, Sydney |
Great Sydney Central Station Honour Board
Claude William Edward GUYOT, (Service Number 3768) was born on 24 August 1895 at Parramatta. In November 1911 he began work as a fitters’ apprentice in the Signalling Branch, but within months had transferred to the Locomotive Branch at Eveleigh. A year before the term of his apprenticeship had expired (24 September 1916) he had joined the Expeditionary Forces, though a note on his card records that upon his return he would be employed as a fitter. He did not return and was in fact dead before the apprenticeship formally expired.
Guyot enlisted at Holdsworthy on 24 August 1915 and being unmarried gave his father Major James Edward Guyot as his next of kin. He was allotted to the 3rd Australian Infantry Battalion.
Submitted 15 August 2023 by John Oakes
Biography contributed by Faithe Jones
Son of James GUYOT
Of Church St, Parramatta, NSW
Biography contributed by John Oakes
Claude William Edward GUYOT, (Service Number 3768) was born on 24th August 1895 at Parramatta. In November 1911 he began work as a fitters’ apprentice in the Signalling Branch, but within months had transferred to the Locomotive Branch at Eveleigh. A year before the term of his apprenticeship had expired (24th September 1916) he had joined the Expeditionary Forces, though a note on his card records that upon his return he would be employed as a fitter. He did not return and was in fact dead before the apprenticeship formally expired.
Guyot enlisted at Holdsworthy on 24th August 1915 and being unmarried gave his father Major James Edward Guyot as his next of kin. He was allotted to the 3rd Australian Infantry Battalion and left Australia from Sydney aboard HMAT ‘Medic’ on 30th December 1915. After a period in Egypt he embarked at Alexandria and passed through Marseilles on 4th April 1916 and was taken on the strength of his unit on 25th May.
He was killed in action between the 22nd and 27th July 1916 – the Battle of Pozières.
Despite repeated letters from his father, a retired military officer, to old friends in the AIF, little was known of Claude Guyot’s fate. The best that could be obtained was from another unnamed soldier in the Army Service Corps, and even this came through the father, not the military:
‘that Claude, after repeatedly risking his life by going out under deadly fire to rescue wounded comrades, had been literally buried by a trench mortar’.
Although Guyot does have a Red Cross Wounded and Missing File, held at the Australian War Memorial, it contains only a single sentence - that no trace could be found in Germany (as a prisoner-of-war).
Major Guyot was apparently well known to several of the officers with whom he corresponded seeking information about his son, and one responded that while he had not known the lad he was ‘undoubtedly a chip off the old block’.
Guyot has no known grave and is remembered on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.
- based on noes for the Great Sydney Central Station Honour Board
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