Eric Hardwick Tayler was a professional soldier.  He left New Zealand the day before Britain declared war on Germany to take up a commission with the York and Lancaster Regiment of the Regular Army in India.1 Soon after he arrived in India, the regiment was ordered back to England and sent to the Western Front.  Tayler contracted double pneumonia in the wintry trenches of Northern France and died aged 21 on 9 February 1915.2 Tayler was the first Collegian known to die in the war.

Born on 16 January 1894, Tayler was the second son of two prominent Auckland amateur opera singers, Archdale and Lilias Tayler.3 The couple often sang together before they were married at All Saints’ in Ponsonby in 1887, and it is tempting to imagine that this was how they met.4 It was said that if Archdale, an accountant, had ‘… adopted the stage as a profession he would have distinguished himself’ while Lilias had a ‘fine soprano voice’.5

Tayler was educated at Auckland Grammar School and St. John’s College, where he held a Maria Blackett Scholarship.6 He was a military cadet at Auckland Grammar School and chose to devote himself to a military career after matriculating.  He spent two years as a Private in the Newton Rifles and continued his education at Auckland University College (AUC), where he studied English, History, and Latin.7 It may have been his operatic genes that gave him a ‘rich voice and handsome appearance’ that ‘added to the beauty of his character’.8

He joined the Coast Defence Detachment of the 3rd Auckland Regiment and was made a 2nd Lieutenant in March 1912.9 Two years later, he sat an examination open to the territorial forces of Canada, South Africa, Malay, and Australasia for commissions in the Imperial Army.  Tayler received the top grade out of about 180 candidates and elected to join the 1st Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment stationed in India.  He received his commission on 20 June 1914 and left New Zealand on 3 August 1914.10

Wartime

The 1st Battalion were stationed in Jubbolpore, India when war was declared on 4 August 1914.  After a brief stay, Tayler embarked with the Battalion from Bombay on 22 November 1914, arriving at Southampton, England on 23 December 1914.  From there, they moved to Hursley Park to join the 83rd Brigade of the 28th Division.  They were mobilized for war with haste and landed at Le Havre as much-needed reinforcements for the Western Front on 17 January 1915, the day after Tayler’s 21st birthday.11

After two weeks of severe weather in the trenches in France, Tayler contracted double pneumonia and was admitted to hospital in Hazebrouck on 31 January 1915.12 Despite a brief improvement in his condition, Tayler died on 9 February 1915 and was buried with military honours in the Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery.13 Student magazine The Kiwi reflected that although he was ‘denied the glory of death on the actual field of battle… he died as he had lived, in the quiet performance of his duty — the death of a real soldier’.14 The flag at Auckland Grammar School was flown at half-mast as a mark of respect for Tayler on 17 February 1915.15

Jonathan Burgess, Special Collections