Herbert Taylor

Age 20    Single

Private 200345
2^nd/4^th Bn., East Lancashire Regiment

Died from pneumonia on
Thursday 17^th October 1918

Herbert’s father died shortly before he was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire .  When Herbert was four years old his mother remarried to a Walter Wood, and they lived at 2 Top Row, Sabden.  Herbert attended Sabden County School and St Nicholas Church.  

Herbert had just started work at Messrs Steiner and Company Printworks when war was declared. He wasted no time in going to Clitheroe to enlist into the army.  As he was still only 16, he lied about his age and was accepted in the East Lancashire Regiment.  

Within two months Herbert was shipped out to Egypt and then on to the Dardanelles where he served throughout the Gallipoli Campaign.  In October 1916 he was drafted to the Western Front.  

In March 1918 during the German Advance, Herbert was posted as missing in action and then in June news was received that Herbert had been taken prisoner of war.  

In October 1918 Herbert’s mother received a letter from an English lady who was working in the British Military Hospital , Charleroi .  She stated that she had spoken to Herbert who asked her to send his mother a line.  Apparently as the Germans retreated they had abandoned their prisoners by the roadside. Herbert was terribly thin and was suffering from pneumonia.  He had said that he would have died had he not been fed by a Belgian woman after being left by the roadside.  

Two days later Herberts family received official news that he had passed away in hospital from pneumonia and that he had been buried at the Harlebeke New British Cemetery , Harlebeke, West-Vlaanderen , Belgium .  

In Sabden he has been remembered on both the School and Church Plaques.