PVT Kenneth Arnold Tant

courtesy of Helen Sharpe

PVT Kenneth Arnold Tant was born 21 Aug 1922 in Nash County, North Carolina. He was the 5th of 7 children of Mack T. and Maggie Rebecca Ann (Lewis) Tant. His father farmed in Nash County near Ferrells. It appears that Maggie suffered from Pelagra, was institutionalized and died in August 1929. His father likely struggled with so many young children on his own and the children were farmed out to relatives. Kenneth was only 7 when his mother died and then his father was murdered in 1933. In 1940 Kenneth was living with his Aunt Hazel Lewis Whitley's brother-in-law. The impending war jump started industry and Kenneth found work as a welder at the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington, North Carolina where they were building Liberty Ships.

Kenneth was drafted in December 1943 and began his military service at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After his basic military training he was sent to the European theater and transferred from the replacement depot to K Company 116th Infantry on 24 Jul 1944 to serve as a rifleman. He fought with the unit at Vire where he was wounded in the leg by fragments from an artillery shell on 4 Aug 1944. Evacuated to hospital, PVT Tant died of his wound on 5 Aug 1944. 

PVT Tant was repatriated in 1949 at the request of his brother Dwight and re-interred in the Samaria Baptist Church Cemetery in Samaria, North Carolina.

Great-grandfather, Elbert C. Lewis, served as a PVT in A Company 47th North Carolina Infantry (CSA) in the Civil War, was captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland. His brother, Dwight Tant, served as a SSG in the U.S. Army in WW2.