Matthew W Taylor

Forename(s):
Matthew W

Surname:
Taylor

Initial(s):
M W (N.B. Recorded as W. M. on Alnwick & Duke's' School War Memorials)

Service Number:
1959

Rank:
Sergeant

Regiment:
Northumberland Fusiliers, 1/7th Battalion Territorial Force

Died:
22/07/1915

Buried:
Strand Military Cemetery

Service History:
Enlisted at Alnwick, Northumberland.

Taylor described trench conditions in letters home & in his diary. To his parents, he wrote:

'I am writing from a rest camp. I have been in the front firing line for five days & took part in the great reinforcement advance. Words cannot describe the scenes. I have had some narrow escapes but got off without injury.

One day I was under the fire of two machine guns & one afternoon under the fire of snipers not less than four times in the open country.

One of our chaps got wounded about 400 yards from our trenches so I volunteered to help carry him back with the help of a stretcher-bearer from the 5th Yorks. How we got him back I know not for their shells were bursting all around us while the snipers spat their wicked bullets all over, but we hung on to our improvised stretcher & at last we got back with our wounded friend. I was over the same country shortly after, looking for a fallen aeroplane. I am on the machine guns having got separated from my battalion.'

In a subsequent message Taylor says: 'I have seen Drummer Alford who told me my brother George was shot through the right lung & has been taken to hospital.'

Taylor was killed in a firefight during the Second Battle of Ypres.
(Source: 'Howick's First World War Stories'; Avril & Arthur Meakin; 2015; pp. 36-37)

Background:
Born at Alnwick, Northumberland, the son of Mr. & Mrs. William Taylor, of Bondgate, Alnwick.

Taylor was an Articled Clerk with W. T. Hindmarsh, an Alnwick solicitor, when he volunteered, training at the Alnwick Camp & then serving in France & Flanders.

At the same time he was writing home to tell his parents that he was 'in the pink', he was recording in his diary the dreadful conditions in the trenches.

His widow, Eleanor (Nellie) whom Taylor had married only 9 days before his embarkation, never remarried & lived at Alnwick for the rest of her life.
(Source: 'Howick's First World War Stories'; Avril & Arthur Meakin; 2015; pp. 36-37)

Local Memorial:
Alnwick War Memorial (Source: newmp.org.uk) Alnwick, Memorial Plaque in former premises of the DukeÂ’s School (Source: For Duke's School, Dudley George; August 2018) Howick, St. Michael & All Angels' Church (Source: 'Howick's First World War Stories'; A