BRIGADIER GENERAL STUART CAMPBELL TAYLOR
GENERAL STAFF
11TH OCTOBER 1918 AGE 45
BURIED: LA KREULE MILITARY CEMETERY, HAZEBROUCK, FRANCE
Stuart Campbell Taylor, a career soldier, was one of seventy-eight generals to die as a result of enemy action in the First World War. Commissioned into the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in 1892, he served in Tirah on the North West Frontier, Mauritius, South Africa, Crete and Northern Nigeria before retiring from the Army in 1911 at the age of 39. He rejoined the regiment on the outbreak of war taking command of the 11th Battalion. In May 1915 he was promoted to command the 15th West Yorkshire Regiment, the Leeds Pals, where his men described him as "a martinet but very fair".
Wounded in May 1916 he was therefore not with his men when they attacked towards the village of Serre at 7.30 on the morning of 1 July 1916, losing 15 officers and 233 men killed in the opening minutes of the campaign. In May 1917, whilst still in command of the regiment, he was awarded the DSO for conspicuous gallantry and then in March 1918 he was promoted Brigadier-General in command of 93rd Brigade, 31st Division. On the morning of 1 October he was on a tour of inspection of his brigades when he was fatally injured by a bursting shell. He died ten days later.
Stuart Campbell Taylor was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and at Bedford Grammar School. A staunch old boy of the Dragon, there is an extensive obituary to him in their memorial volume, 'Dragon School, Old Boys and Masters Who Gave Their Lives in the Great War'. The book has two illustrations painted by his younger brother the artist Leonard Campbell Taylor, who was also an old boy of the school.
Brigadier-General Taylor's inscription was chosen by his widowed mother and comes from the Te Deum:
We therefore pray thee, help Thy servants: whom thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood
Make them to be numbered with Thy saints: in glory everlasting.