The AIF Project

John TAYLOR

Regimental number284
Place of birthGlasgow, Scotland
ReligionPresbyterian
OccupationLabourer
Address405 Errard Street South, Ballarat, Victoria
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation30
Height5' 10"
Weight127 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs Jane Taylor, 21 Main Street, Rainsford, Falkirk, Scotland
Previous military serviceServed in the Scottish Borderers for 12 years.
Enlistment date18 August 1914
Rank on enlistmentColour SGT
Unit name8th Battalion, C Company
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/25/1
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board Transport A24 Benalla on 19 October 1914
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll8th Battalion
Recommendations (Medals and Awards)

Mention in Despatches


Awarded, and gazetted, 'London Gazette', second Supplement, No. 30448 (28 December 1917); 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 57 (18 April 1918).

FateKilled in Action 20 September 1917
Age at death from cemetery records34
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 17), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
54
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: Duncan and Jane TAYLOR; husband of Mary TAYLOR, 98 Lumby Stret, Grangemouth, Scotland. Native of Falkirk, Scotland
Other details

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Embarked from Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, 5 April 1915. Appointed Regimental Sergeant Major, 9 May 1915. Admitted to 2nd Field Ambulance, 20 July 1915 (pyrexia), and transferred to 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station, and thence to Fleet Sweeper. Discharged to duty from 28th Casualty Clearing Station, 1 August 1915; rejoined Bn, 2 August 1915. Admitted to No. 2 Field Ambulance Camp Sarpi, Mudros, 9 November 1915 (appendicitis); transferred to No. 3 Australian General Hospital, Lemnos, 9 November 1915; to Lowland Casualty Clearing Station, 2 December 1915; transferred by HS 'Soudan' to Malta, 23 December 1915, and admitted to Riscoli Military Hospital, 26 December 1915. Embarked on HS 'Valdivia', 21 January 1916; admitted to No. 3 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, Egypt, 21 January 1916; discharged to duty, 26 January 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 26 April 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 30 April 1916.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

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