224215 John Vivian David TAYLOR, MC, 2 Irish Guards

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    Captain 'Tinker' Taylor
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2019
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    Personal Number: 224215
    Rank: Second Lieutenant
    Name: John Vivian David TAYLOR
    Unit: Irish Guards

    London Gazette : 6 Feb 1942
    https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/35445/supplement/604/data.pdf
    FOOT GUARDS.
    The undermentioned Cadets to be 2nd Lts. 17th Jan. 1942: —
    I. G'ds
    John Vivian David TAYLOR (224215).

    London Gazette : 21 December 1944
    https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/36850/supplement/5855/data.pdf
    The Military Cross.
    Lieutenant (acting Captain) John Vivian David Taylor (224215), Irish Guards (Penzance).

    London Gazette : 10 May 1949
    https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/38606/supplement/2294/data.pdf
    I. G’ds.
    The undermentioned Lts. from Emerg. Commns. to be Lts., 1st Jan. 1949, and are granted the hon. rank of Capt.:—
    J. V. D. TAYLOR, M.C. (224215).
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2019
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    http://www.cornish-pirates.com/pzn/history/players/tinker_talyor.html

    [​IMG]

    Vivian 'Tinker' Taylor

    The only son of Mr. John Taylor of Polwithen, Penzance, John Vivian David (‘Tinker’) Taylor was educated at Downside School and following Sandhurst served in the Irish Guards in WW2.

    He was a wartime hero, popular Pirates rugby captain, Penzance businessman and magistrates chairman.
    In August, 1944, Captain Taylor was in command of tanks that faced heavy German attacks in their support of the infantry.

    Panzers and guns knocked out many British tanks, including his own, so he took over another tank which later became bogged down.

    Despite this he stayed there for nearly two hours, directing the fire from his other tanks. When the position was consolidated and he had a direct order to withdraw he took his men safely back.

    He was later awarded the Military Cross, for ‘displaying perseverance and gallantry of a very high order.’

    After the war, this modestly quiet but immensely popular man went into the family business of Taylor’s Garage, along from the Yacht Inn opposite the bathing pool. He developed the business until in the late seventies he left to fulfil an ambition to read history at Cambridge University.

    But what of his rugby? Well, his passion for the game was nurtured as a small boy when his father took him to watch Penzance play at St. Clare.

    In 1939 he played for Penzance Reserves against Newlyn Reserves at St. Goulder, not knowing then that six years later he would play at scrum-half for the new Penzance & Newlyn RFC in their first-ever match which was played against Guy’s Hospital on 22nd, September, 1945. ‘Tinker’ captained the Pirates in 1949-50 and 1950-51, seasons which saw us beat Cardiff 5-0 and draw with them 3-all. He also played six times for Cornwall.

    Remarking on his Pirates career he once said: ‘The abiding thing for me is the spirit of the Pirates, a spirit born of the friendships and sense of comradeship – we were a band of brothers.’

    ‘Tinker’ was also chairman of the Governors at St. Mary’s RC School, chairman of the Sailors Institute Charity, besides also being a Past President and Life Member of the West Penwith Cricket League.
    Retirement (and he clearly deserved it!) eventually saw him settle at Wimborne, Dorset, where he passed away in 2003 aged 81 years.
     

    Attached Files:

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    'Tinker' Taylor, April 1945, From The Armoured Micks
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    * From -

    The Armoured Micks
    1941 to 1945

    INTRODUCTION


    Two years ago Major Tony Brady, the Irish Guards Regimental Archivist, asked me to gather in, for the archives, reminiscences of their time in the 2nd (Armoured) Battalion from those Micks who had served in the battalion and with whom I was still in touch.

    As they have come in, some in the form of anecdotes and others as fairly fully accounts of their time in the regiment, it has become clear that an anthology of excerpts from these reminiscences would be of great interest, certainly to those who have served in the Micks, and possibly to a wider readership. Without exception everyone looked back on their time in the battalion with great pride and affection.


    As Brigadier Mick O'Cock put it ...
    "The four years as an armoured battalion had been a great experience. There is no doubt that working together as a tank crew leads to a very special form of comradeship. Having had three years together in England before going into battle, many crews and indeed squadrons, had come to know each other so well that they were able to face the enemy with great confidence in each other ... replacements for killed and wounded crew members were always accepted into the team at once and the old comradeship was restored immediately ... fifty years later there is still something special about having served in 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Irish Guards."

    ... and Lance-Corporal Bill Eager ...
    "It is a tribute to those we served with in the most unromantic and soul-destroying situations, that the quality of leadership and comradeship never faltered and was of the highest order, and though I would never wish to undergo a similar experience ever again, had I to do so I would wish no other men to go into action with than those who formed the Second Battalion Irish Guards."

    ... and Guardsman Frank Hetherington ...
    "... a most charismatic spirit of comradeship grew throughout the Battalion ... from my own experience, the discipline was strict and there was respect for the officers and N.C.O.s but an unspoken and robust affection grew between the tank troops and squadrons - indeed, throughout the whole battalion."

    ... and from Captain Hujohn Ripman, RAMC, our splendid Medical Officer, who was, to us all, a Mick who happened to be a fine and gallant doctor. Referring to those who came to the battalion to fill the gaps left by casualties during the Normandy fighting, he writes ...
    "... they were well received by their friends, were pleased to be at the sharp end at last, and as typical Micks were good humoured, unpretentious, brave and prepared immediately, as all good Micks were, to "lead on", and from the front ... "It is extraordinary" I wrote (in a letter to my parents), "how the holes in the ranks have closed up, the efficiency goes on, business as usual. It is certainly a grand battalion I am with and we are all very good friends.""

    The War in Europe ended, the battalion moved to Gummersbach. There, Guardsman Roger Keyes writes ...
    "Then there was the Boxing Day football match between officers and sergeants, more in the nature of a rag than anything. The Germans could not understand this at all, shaking their heads and saying how bad for discipline this must be. The concept of camaraderie which existed in the Micks alongside tough discipline quiet escaped them."

    ... and Captain James Osborne ...
    "It was also farewell to the Battalion i had loved and in which it had been my undeserved good fortune to have served. Now I think it is time to try and analyse why I think all who served in this Battalion, so loved it, that, when wounded, our only ambition was to get back to the Battalion as soon as possible

    Firstly, we were predominately wartime soldiers and volunteers, but led by the most humane and excellent 'regulars', who themselves had volunteered to try out that most unguardsmanlike warfare of fighting in tin boxes and getting covered in dust, grease and oil. They were innovators, not traditionalists. Though I myself was a volunteer, who would otherwise have been conscripted, we had a high proportion of true volunteers from both the north and the south of Ireland. Protestant and Catholic fought side by side in the same tank and never, never was there any suspicion of one by the other.

    Secondly, when in action Officers and Guardsmen shared the same life - the Officer, being also a member of a five man crew, sharing with that crew the fourteen man food pack, sleeping beside the tank with them, helping to refuel when the truck arrived, often about midnight after a hard day's fighting. Fifty years on, when meeting again in Douai, we found no difficulty in being on nickname or christian name terms.

    Thirdly, our training and regimental tie meant that there was only one place one could be sent to fight and so wounded and unhorsed Officers and Guardsmen came back again (and sometimes again and again) to the Battalion, bringing back with them their experience and on the whole ensuring that no new tank crew came up without some experienced members. This all led to a high sense of integrity, to humour rather than pomposity and to a very great sense of belonging."


    Looking back more than fifty years, the thing that strikes one most strongly is the way in which a collection of extremely unwarlike and caring individuals became a very effective and determined fighting unit. How did it happen that in all the horrors of war groups of men, gentle and caring men, could be welded to fighting with such strength and determination? The answer of course lay in training, above all in discipline and the resolve never to fail one's comrades, that is so much part of the British Regimental tradition. As Guardsman Jim Hetherington writes when describing 'The ethos of the Irish Guards'...

    "The Brigade of Guards generally, has its own traditions and high "standards of excellence" in every aspect of soldiering. These apply equally to courage and efficiency in battle, and smartness and iron discipline elsewhere ... In the Brigade there was a fiction, that was accepted by all of us, that officers and 'other ranks' were different orders of creation. This was maintained in the conventions of saluting, standing to attention when addressing or being addressed by officers, and treating them generally with exaggerated respect. This was true irrespective of the age and military experience of the people concerned. A Regimental Sergeant Major with twenty years service behaved with extreme deference to a young 'chico' of 20 who was newly commissioned and just out of school. This behaviour we accepted because the whole edifice of the Guards' discipline depended on immediate and unquestioning obedience to any order given. There were those of us, on both sides of the divide, who recognised that this was a fiction, and accepted it, and others who really believed in the dichotomy. In the long run, it made no difference; the officers and senior N.C.O.s, 99% of the time, expected obedience and got it."

    ... and our doctor Hujohn Ripman ...
    "At Huis Oosterhout the Regimental Sergeant Major (R.S.M. Jock McGarrity) organised drill parades with a severity that would have done justice to preparation for trooping. I was extremely critical of the perpetration of 'such nonsense' on men who had proved their guts and gallantry without any of 'that rubbish' during the three months past. How slow I must have been not yet to have realised that from that sort of indoctrinated discipline, came the very guts and gallantry that I so admired."

    ... and Rip again ...
    "I have a note dated 22nd November which I think indicated how close we were to our brothers in arms ... "The poor bloody infantry are wonderful men; I doff my cap to them. If you were to take our 3rd Battalion out of the line tomorrow and put them on the local town square, they would be turned out fit to Troop the Colour; trousers creased and cap stars shining. No wonder the Germans are scared stiff of them. It has been raining for days and the earth is a puddle, and the slit trenches are lakes.""


    No one could have better expressed the pride that we took in the Micks of the two infantry battalions, for they set and maintained the very highest standards of excellence both in and out of battle, the 1st Battalion in North Africa and at Anzio, and the 3rd Battalion in the extremely hard and costly fighting in Normandy and later in Holland and the Rhineland. A truly Regimental Battle Group was created when the two Mick Battalions in Guards Armoured Division became the Irish Guards Group in Douai on the 2nd September 1944, for many of the reinforcments who came out to the 3rd Battalion in Normandy and in Holland were 1st Battalion veterans.

    This bond of loyalty and friendship was equally strong with our Royal Corps of Signals men, with the R.E.M.E. Tank Recovery men in the L.A.D., the R.A.S.C. ambulance drivers and R.A.M.C. orderlies who travelled well up with the R.A.P., and with our superb Gunners, with whom we worked so closely through their Battery Commanders and Forward Observation Officers. We were indeed blessed.

    One of the first contributions I received was from Captain Sandy Faris, the Battalion Signal Officer from August 1944 to the end of the war. His 'Battle Music' was written with a typical 'Sandy' touch, light and entertaining, and as some years ago his biography of Offenbach was published I asked him if he would take on the editing of this book. Happily he agreed, and suggested that I should write the narrative linking the extracts from the individual reminiscences.


    Vivian Taylor
    1997
     
  8. Bernard85

    Bernard85 WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    good day dbf.m.yesterday,06:10pm.re:captain john vivian david 'tinker' taylor M.C.2nd armoured bn,irish guards age 81.? born feb,1922.#1,may he rest in peace.regards bernard85 :poppy: :poppy:
     

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