Studio portrait of Lieutenant Thomas George Taylor. A farmer by trade, Taylor was living in South ...

Studio portrait of Lieutenant Thomas George Taylor. A farmer by trade, Taylor was living in South Africa when the Boer War broke out and he joined Brabant's Horse. When that regiment was disbanded, he returned home and after a short holiday re-enlisted, with his brother Owen, and embarked as a troop sergeant with Colonel Lassetter's Regiment. His family history has it that he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) during the Boer War however there is no record of this in the London Gazette, "Recipients of the DCM 1855-1909 (P E Abbott) or "Official Record of the Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa (Murray)". The latter however records him as being one of a small number of men of the NSW Imperial Bushmen, who, worthy of recognition, were presented with Queen Alexandra's Pipe. After the outbreak of the First World War, he was one of five brothers who served, and enlisted on 17 December 1915, in Queensland. He embarked from Sydney, NSW, on 18 May 1916 aboard HMAT Demosthenes with the 41st Battalion. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 6 September 1916 and promoted to lieutenant on 22 May 1917. He was wounded in action in France on 2 July 1917 and died from those wounds on 5 July 1917, aged 43, and is buried in the Trois Arbres Cemetery in Steenwerck, France.