Veteran Notes/Bio
1st Australian Horse, Trooper No. 811
3rd New South Wales Mounted Rifles, Sergeant No. 3094
Born at ‘Turalla’ 22 May 1880, the third of Owen and Harriet Taylor’s twelve children. Only 19 when he enlisted and within two months of war breaking out, he was heading for South Africa on the Langton Grange.
The Queanbeyan Age 10 February 1900 published the following extract of a letter to his mother from Rensburg:
“We have only just come into camp after 48 hours out, without sleep. The Boers are not good rifle shots. We were two nights at Capetown. Then we got on the train and we were in it for over 50 hours before we arrived at Arundel.
We had donkey races in the camp at the Cape. When we left the kopjes (hills covered with rocks) this morning the Boers were shelling us, but they didn’t hit us. There is very heavy artillery firing going on at Colesburg today. We expect to be called out any minute. I don’t think much of this country. I haven’t seen a tree since I left Australia. It is very hot in the daytime but freezing at night. We are rigged out in khaki even to our helmets. We are attached to the Lancers. They were under fire before they came here, but not a man of them was even wounded. The Boers took a carbineer prisoner the other day, and they stripped him and ill-treated him and sent him back. We have not much chance of resting, as we have to be ready to turn out any minute, day or night, and have everything ready to pop on and mount in five minutes. We are very near the Orange Free State border.”
Not long after writing that letter, he was shot in the shoulder at Driefontein on 10 March 1900 and soon after that he was in Bloemfontein Hospital with enteric fever for months. He remained in South Africa until 7 January 1901, when he was invalided home in early February. Within ten days of returning, he had re-enlisted, as had his brother Thomas, with the 3rd NSW Mounted Rifles as a Sergeant in A Squadron. In South Africa for his second term of duty he was attached to Remington’s column and was promoted to Lieutenant on 28 February 1901.
He returned to Australia on 3 June 1902 and was awarded the Queen’s Medal with six clasps. After the war, he went to live in New Zealand, where he drew a soldier settlement block at Rotorua, on which he ran cattle and sheep. He married Alice Arnott Alford and they had four children. He died on 6 March 1964 aged 83 .Served as an Officer #24293 in the New Zealand Army 1914-1918.
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