WITH THE current focus on the First World War, stories that have lain untold for many years are emerging from family sources, writes Mark Khan. The Herts At War Project has recently uncovered one of these accounts. Private William Taylor was serving with the 1st Battalion the Hertfordshire Regiment, a pre-war Territorial unit, when war broke out in August 1914. The 1st Herts was among a small number of Territorial units which were sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. The Herts Regiment was attached to the 4th (Guards) Brigade of part of the 2nd Division. As a result of the dedication, professionalism, courage under fire and comradeship it showed in the days and weeks that followed, the battalion earned the nickname of the "Herts Guards". Aged 23, Private Taylor had travelled to France 1914 with his regiment in 1914. He served as part of a Lewis gun team. When he went to war, Taylor took with him a set of eight photographs, which included images of members of his family, keeping them in a wallet in his breast pocket, as his grandson, David Taylor, recalls: "When he left for France in 1914 he took these pictures with him as keepsakes. In quiet moments he got them out and looked at them and remembered his family back at home". Little did he know that the wallet and these photographs would one day protect him from serious injury or possibly death.
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