IN MEMORY OF OUR BAXENDEN LADS

1914 - 1918

& 1939 - 1946

Wm. Turner - November 1994

Introduction
Baxenden War Memorial

CUCKNELL, Alan
GIBSON, Edward
KAVANAGH, Wilfred
TAYLOR, Ernest
WINTERBOTTOM, Richard

Links

Accrington Pals
Visit to Serre
The Somme and Vimy
First World War pages

Designed by  M i c r o L o f t

BOMBARDIER 3859130 ERNEST TAYLOR of the 55th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, was killed in action on April 8th 1945 during the final advance into Germany, which led to the end of the war one month later.

Ernest was aged twenty eight. He was born in Oldham, the son of Samuel and Edith Taylor. He was working at a dye-works in Lancaster when war was declared in 1939. Ernest and Nellie married in 1939, and in 1940 he was called up into the Army. He went to France in 1944 and took part in the heavy fighting from Normandy in France into Germany itself.

At the time of his death Ernest left Nellie a widow with a small daughter aged three. Nellie, formerly from Baxenden, lived in Morecambe at that time.

Ernest was buried by his comrades in a small cemetery in Ohrte, near Osnabruck. In April 1946, however, the Army Graves Service chose a site at Rheinburg for a permanent War Cemetery where the graves could be better cared for. Rheinburg is a small town about three miles from the west bank of the River Rhine, fifteen miles north of Krefeld and eight miles south of Wesel. The War Cemetery is two miles from the town centre in a pleasant situation in agricultural land with woods to the north and west. There are 3,310 war graves, mostly R.A.F. men lost in bombing raids over Germany. Ernest is with 404 of his military comrades.