When John Taylor was President of the Mess Committee of the Castle Mess, he organized ‘innumerable’ R.H.F. luncheons ‘after which one was lucky not to fall asleep on the train back to Glasgow (and only wake up once it had re-shuttled back to Edinburgh).’ He was known as ‘the Bottle Major’ for his liberal distribution of drinks and during his days the post-lunch port seemed to flow without ceasing. They were grand and enjoyable affairs while John had the chair (literally, as he rarely stood while drinking). The luncheons continued even after John rescinded his responsibility to Lieutenant Colonel Ian Shepherd who ensured their continuation, though they adopted their true title: the J.A.R.T. Luncheon (rather than the original R.H.F. Luncheon).
For these gatherings and his deep ties to the regiment, Major Taylor was a character of the Royal Highland Fusiliers. But before the luncheons – before 1959 when the regiment formed from amalgamation of the Royal Scots Fusiliers and John’s former regiment the Highland Light Infantry, he had a much more serious history.
His war service began outside of his Scottish regiments, far removed from the United Kingdom in India where he joined the Gurkhas in September 1943. There was some glamor and honor in a subaltern serving in the Indian Army, and the pay was better, but above all was the allure of adventure. Straight after commissioning he was off to the Gurkha Regimental Center at Dehra Dun and then drafted as a replacement to the 1st Battalion, 2d Gurkha Rifles. It would be some time, almost a year, before posting to a combat zone.
John was, as all junior British officers in the Indian Army, given responsibilities well beyond what he would have seen in the British Army where he might have been a platoon commander. But a jemedar would have held that role, as all platoon commanders were Gurkhas themselves, and John was a company officer from the start, supervising (rather than commanding) and tasked with administration. As long as he listened to the Viceroy Commissioned Officers, he did well. Those Gukrha officers had many more years of service, were very experienced, and less likely to become a casualty than his British counterpart. These were men he could trust and take great pride in and the same would be returned to him.
As Gordon Casserly wrote: “One must always bear in mind that every company officer who is worth his salt is persuaded that there are no men like his own. It is a pleasing trait and an essential one. For it is the sworn confraternity between the British and Indian officer, and the strong tie that binds the sepoy to his Sahib which have given the Indian Army its traditions and prestige.”
During that year in India, as a subaltern with no experience and no knowledge of the language, he went on to pass his Urdu exam and learn Gurkahli.
The Gurkhas themselves were very cheerful and happy, did not require much information, and unlike other units that could be noisy and talkative, were silent. They upheld their status quo as a formidable regiment and, so long as they had their rum ration, were always high spirited. They were all short in stature, about five-and-a-half feet tall, so any British officer of reasonable height towered above. The officer commanding at the front and a company officer like Taylor at the back stood tall against the short fighters.
GOTHIC LINE
Months after Monte Cassino, on August 6th, 1944, John joined B Company, 1st/2nd Gurkhas while they moved from Prato Magno to the eastern slopes of the Apennines on the eastern most flank of the British 8th Army. The enemy had blown every bridge along the route, blocked the highways with gaping craters, trees, demolished houses, and concrete blocks. Despite the best efforts of the sappers and miners, the 4th Division struggled to keep up with the advance, but they made it through winding mountain roads and ancient little villages to reach to the Foglia Valley. By the end of the month, they were looking over the Gothic Line battlefield as the 5th and 11th Indian Brigades attacked the high ground north of Monte Calvo.
After a long wait, John’s B Company, alongside A Company, was set for a night time recce and assault of German rearguards detected along the left flank. Major Shakespear briefed them for the silent assault for August 30th, but ‘unfortunately, the moon played traitor and revealed the approach.’ The enemy fled before the Gurkhas could close and the assault companies without opposition dug in along Santa Barbara ridge.
The next afternoon, Lieutenant Taylor took a recce patrol toward the river. He returned proudly with two German deserters – the last two known to be encountered south of the Foglia, but among the first he encountered. Patrols continued through the first week of September while A and D Companies were pummeled in an assault. After they recovered during a short reserve, the battalion was back to patrolling and raiding villages. The days were rainy and wet with bitter fights against the withdrawing but no less determined enemy. The Gurkhas proved to be incredible fighters shown by several actions in which a single man caused enough turmoil for a unit to flee.
At the end of September, the mountainous terrain the Gurkhas were fighting up made movement by motor difficult enough that they had resorted to mules. John took a platoon of B Company on a recce across the Rubicon from Trebbio to seek out Bosche locations. The patrol found them – in fact they were surrounded by the Germans and quickly pulled out avoiding any engagement. They returned early the next morning to report finding an estimated enemy company protecting mine-laying operations along the road on the west bank.
With the 1st Royal Sussex getting shelled across the river and 46th Division holding a small bridgehead, plans came together to send 7th Brigade in for an attack. Plans for the advance were laid with 1st/2nd Gurkhas to cross the Rubicon from the Tribbio area once the opening phase had succeeded, then push north on a two-company front toward Montalbano. The conditions imposed on the battalion were severe. The forming-up line lay four miles away in enemy-held ground and could not be reconnoitered; there was no opportunity for daylight patrols or preliminary crossings of the Rubicon. The advance would therefore take place at night into largely unknown terrain, which the war diary composer noted as “hardly Napoleonic,” but it had to be done.
Against this uncertain and poorly defined situation, B Company stepped off after A Company just after midnight. Major Carter followed the A Company path down the road in file while ‘all the spandaus in the world started up from area of the A Company objective.’ Soon all companies were reporting fire from the crossroads. Soon the Germans ‘started heavy and accurate shelling…by the grace of God missing the complete battalion mule train.’
Major Carter ‘rightly thinking he was following A Company’ had unfortunately taken B Company straight into the enemy while still in file. A Company, as it turned out, had gotten lost, and B Company ‘stuck into the Bosche straight away’ to clear out the southern side of the road and dig in. By the time they claimed the area north of the crossroads, they had killed thirty, captured six machine guns, and taken five prisoners.
For the entire day of the 27th, they fought very closely with the enemy under spasmodic fire. The Company Headquarters, while fit for a Gurkha, was less desirable for Taylor and his taller counterparts, particularly Major Carter who, at 6-foot-3-inches, ‘his view whilst clean and accurate was not encouraging.’
For eight hard days and nights they fought and patrolled north of the Rubicon in cold, windy, wet, foul weather. The enemy, determined to prevent any footing on the north side of the river, shelled with accurate and concentrated artillery the entire time. By the end, they were thoroughly wet and hungry as food was late crossing the swollen river. On the afternoon of October 4th, the Gurkhas were happy to recross the Rubicon. It was ‘as tough a week as any since Cassino.’
MACEDONIA
With no idea of their final destination, the Battalion began trekking south for a month of rest. The diary remarked it was an ‘interesting drive laterally across the Gothic defences – suitably impressed – very fortunate we attacked before they were fully occupied.’ They made it to Perugia to billets in Italian barracks that offered little room outside of bunking, but it was at least dry and warm for the men who had been soaked consistently for the past two weeks. It was a short stay before moving into a a Fascist girls’ college – ‘a very modern and well-built place which must have cost a fortune’ furnished with electric lighting, water, and adequate room for activity with a gymnasium, sports field, and swimming bath. This was all decorated with an aptly noted statue of a ‘meagrely dressed young lady.’ ‘We should be happy here,’ was the closing note for October 17th.
Nine days later they learned of their move to Salonika – part of a very secret scheme of movement of troops to Greece. After a few officers visited Rome, the troopship sailed across the sea. While enroute, the Battalion learned the Germans had evacuated completely and tactical beach landings were no longer necessary. It would be quiet until the New Year.
B Company was detached to the outlying town of Kozane to maintain law and order and to assist government officials. The political situation was found to be ‘very confusing’ with nearly all of the locals walking around armed and the Greek People’s Liberation Army (E.L.A.S.) holding anti-British demonstrations. Soon the E.L.A.S. party was very deliberating ‘stirring up’ anti-British feelings among the civilian population which further deteriorated the political situation into the beginning of December. Despite this, B Company was recalled to Battalion at Salonika. Without adequate transport for their store of ammunition, they blew the dump before returning. They had enjoyed their detachment so much that the commander reported he was sorry to be back.
While E.L.A.S. continued to intensify the atmosphere, the Battalion was withdrawn to avoid confrontation and celebrated Christmas quietly as to not provoke anyone. At midnight of the new year, gunfire erupted all over Salonika and Brigade ordered all troops to stand-to, believe E.L.A.S. to have finally made an attack. It turned out to be an old Greek custom to ‘shoot the new year in.’
The feelings of the Grecian posting would be repeated years later when Johnny returned to the region to quell unrest in Cyprus.
IPOH
After the 1st/2nd Gurkhas returned to India, Taylor was posted a few months later the Regimental Center where he became adjutant. Until this point, Johnny’s boxing had not been in much focus, but he was a good boxer and with Captain P. M. Clark, entered the Officers’ Welterwight Class for the All India Individual Championships at Lahore that year. He then took over as commanding officer of the training battalion during the September 9th to October 13th security problems where they actively attended to disturbances.
He joined the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Gurkhas in Bengal and went with them to Ipoh, Malaya in early 1948 through May 1949. The battalion worked closely with Taylor’s old 1st Battalion, though both had changed significantly in the short years after the war. The operation became one of platoon strength or smaller units in a ‘long, deadly game of hide and seek which was to mean several years of hunting an elusive enemy, many weary miles of patrolling through rubber, jungle and swamp, often in monsoon rain, endless hours in mosquito-ridden ambush positions.’
Murder and arson were rampant and the civilian population was reluctant to divulge information should they be targeted next. This left the Gurkhas to go search for themselves, often turning up nothing or maybe one terrorist killed or a camp destroyed. The continuous patrolling and sweeps across South Johore did, however, deter the terrorists enough that most of the larger organized groups fled north by mid-1949.
THE HOOK
Having taken a regular commission in the Highland Light Infantry, Captain Taylor was off next to Korea in autumn 1952 to join the Black Watch. On November 3rd, six days after taking on strength as second-in-command of C Company, they took over from the 7th Marines on Hill 121 beside the Hook. The whole company, on finding the positions unsatisfactorily maintained, ‘had to do a great deal of work digging, wiring and building bunkers.’ Otherwise, the hand over was very cordial with the Black Watch borrowing and trading everything they could from the Americans.
The Second Battle of the Hook did not place the Company in the most immediate danger, but they did take some heavy mortaring when the Chinese attacked near midnight on a moonless night. They survived their month on the line to leave on December 1st for canvas tentage under snow. On handing over the P.P.C.L.I., the Colonel suggested, by no uncertain terms: “Let’s have a party!” The Officers’ Mess, which had hardly existed in the first six months since the Black Watch arrived in Korea, finally had a chance to organize with the majority of its members in range of each other.
After two weeks in reserve – once two pyramidal tents were erected to house a ramshackle dining room, anteroom, and bar and cloakroom furnished with blanket-upholstered homemade arm chairs – the officers initiated their mid-day party which brought over one hundred attendants.
“’Turk's blood,’ compounded to the Colonel's recipe and dispensed freely by John Taylor, ensured a cheerful assembly… We took it as a distinctly good sign that one of the first three guests to arrive about twelve o'clock was also among the last to leave—about four… The party continued in the evening at Inchon, whither Peter Lindsay, John Taylor, Geordie Chalmer, Adam
Gurdon, Neil Lennox, Richard Haw and Peter Carthew repaired when the fun died down here. From reports reaching us the following evening, it seems that the party continued without break right through Sunday.”
January actually brought more artillery on C Company than Taylor’s first tour on the Hook. They returned to the line on the 3rd, with platoons well dispersed – 9 Platoon, for example, was a full twenty-minute walk from Company Headquarters and had only six visitors during the month apart from the commanding officer and Captain Taylor, ‘two of whom were distressed that they had taken a wrong path and were not at Coy HQ.’ The Chinese across the valley targeted the jeep track and the camouflaged road leading up to Company Headquarters. Snipers pestered the parapets and the Jocks answered with mortars and Brownings. A few weeks of this and the regiment was back in reserve again where John Taylor furnished the officers with ‘some extraordinary Japanese wooden puzzles which are quite exasperating,’ Colonel Rose recounted. ‘They are the same idea as Hugh's Humpty-Dumpty, but terribly difficult. They do make wonderful things in wood.’
‘No-one was sorry to leave the rest area, for we had been there for two months, and it was a welcome change to get back to the very different routine of the line.’ The ‘welcome change’ came with dozens of shells each day, many striking close to Taylor in the company command post, and ranging in all sizes from small mortars to huge 122mm shells. Despite the shelling, it was noted that C Company returned to the Hook during a “quiet period,” with the height of action on April 23rd when a 7 Platoon standing patrol were attacked.
Across the valley, the Chinese taunted the Jocks with leaflet drops in between shelling and loudspeaker broadcasts. “Do you remember November 19? You were there weren’t you? We give you thirty-one days to get off.”
One night, Captain Taylor contacted the Ronson patrol over wireless and requeisted the operator of 8 Platoon blow twice if everything was quiet. He responded as asked: “Phew! Phew!” and closed with an audible “Over,” which Taylor ‘only just refrained from answering “Phew! Out.”’
C Company moved to battalion reserve at the end of April, and they could only observe the battle that occurred on the night of May 8th. It was an exceptionally quiet one and the humid air hinted of the muggy Korean summers. Over the next few hours, the enemy began poking at the Hook and spotty shelling broke the gentle night from midnight on with a steady amount of noise. Chinese sneaking across the valley triggered trip flares across the battlefield and soon gunfire and artillery erupted and continued without cessation.
Just as the sky was beginning to lighten to a dim grey, a brutal hour of five hundred shells and mortars commenced. The relentless Chinese continued to clamber over the wire obstacles and creeped out of a thick veil of smoke on the skyline, silhouetted by the glow of flares and beams of tank searchlights. As the eastern horizon illuminated, the battle dwindled. The last rifle cracks echoed and minor artillery missions chased any stubborn enemy from various ridges. In the valleys between the fingers extending from the Hook, the battle’s smoke was taken slowly with the breeze. Beating helicopters arrived and left with wounded and on the other side the Chinese were observed carrying their own casualties away – they were left to their duties and not fired upon as a courtesy.
By nighttime, the propaganda loudspeakers were active again: “You only beat off a patrol action last night, but you will have something bigger to deal with in five nights time!” And it was assumed from the repeated verbiage that the Watch had dealt a serious blow to the Chinese.
On the evening of May 13th, after a day of torrential rain, the Black Watch moved into Brigade reserve on handing over to the Duke of Wellington’s. C Company remained in support and became V Company, ‘The Black Dukes.’ They encountered more difficulties than expected on Point 146 and remained at full stand-to for several nights while subjected to constant artillery barrages and mortaring during both day and night. This all caused ‘considerable strain on everyone, but most of all it seemed on the company commander and the second-in-command, Captain Taylor, showed it when he called in a non-existent patrol over the air.’
Once their time on 146 concluded on May 23d, they were back in Yongdong Po with the battalion. Two nights later, three hundred shells rained in on the company area and they wondered if they would ever find peace.
IMPERIAL TWILIGHT
The company was overrun with rumors of when they would leave Korea, until finally on July 3d they left Yongdong in the hands of the Durham Light Infantry and prepared to hand over fully to the Royal Scots who had just arrived in full. Ahead of them was Kenya and the prospect of an entirely different kind of warfare. The long journey by sea, with a brief recreational stop in Singapore, got the Black Watch to Mombassa where those who stayed debarked and continued on to Nairobi and immediately to Ol Joro Orok for a month of training.
By the end of the month the battalion had been drawn once more into the tightening security operations around Nairobi, moving south to assist in a cordon north of the city that was expected to last thirty-six hours but was lifted after only twelve. From there the column pushed on toward Thika, pausing only briefly before being committed again to another cordon some fifteen miles away. It was during this sweep that the battalion secured its first Mau Mau prisoner, halted by Corporal Urquhart as he attempted to break through the perimeter. After the operation the unit withdrew to Thika for a final night’s rest before moving forward toward its forest base at Kiamuturi on the edge of the jungle.
The journey to Kiamuturi proved more arduous than anticipated. What should have been a straightforward sixty-mile move turned into a punishing ten-hour crawl as the road surface deteriorated from choking dust to deep mud. Vehicles repeatedly bogged down on steep gradients, requiring the men to push and haul the lorries forward yard by yard. The difficulties culminated when the cook’s truck overturned on a sharp bend, scattering its contents — including Private Chisholm — across the roadside. Only by persistence and considerable exertion did the convoy finally reach camp late in the evening after ten hours, ‘much to the delight of Captain Taylor and his advance party, who had been without a meal since breakfast.’
*
With his own Highland Light Infantry once again for the year of 1955, Taylor was destined for duty on Cyprus after Christmas and New Year’s Leave at the end of the year. There was some reorganization to the companies on their posting and Johnny moved to command D Company who saw little activity out of their desolate camp on the island.
Their work was of constant patrol activity, security duties, and cooperation with police forces in a deteriorating internal security situation. The battalion’s companies were distributed across the island, with detachments at Mersinikki, Kantara, and the police station at Yialousa, while Battalion Headquarters and supporting elements established themselves in increasingly permanent camps around Dhavlos and later Rizzokarpaso.
Frequent cordon-and-search operations, curfews, vehicle patrols, and small-scale bomb incidents across the battalion’s area of responsibility, illustrated the persistent tension that characterized the emergency despite the absence of major engagements. Like the nature of Malaya, the Cyprus deployment required careful management of detachments spread across isolated posts, often in austere conditions, and placed emphasis on initiative at company and platoon level.
Just as D Company transformed into training company to handle the draft intakes, Captain Taylor returned home to become adjutant of the Territorial 1st Battalion, Glasgow Highlanders. At the end of 1958, after a good deal of time as adjutant, Johnny Taylor was off the Aden. It was the beginning of the end of colonial rule in the Protectorate. It would be his home until 1961 and therefore missed the amalgamation of his Highland Light Infantry with the Royal Scots Fusiliers to form the new Royal Highland Fusiliers. “We are sorry that several members of the Battalion have left before seeing the fruition of their labours…Major R . Taylor's departure, and with it his spirit and enthusiasm, is a severe loss.”
He eventually returned to the R.H.F. in 1963 after Aden and some time with the All Arms Junior Leaders’ Regiment and various other instructional appointments, where operational experience gained in Italy, Malaya, Korea, and Kenya informed the training of younger soldiers entering a very different army from that of 1945. In regimental life he would also assume the responsibilities of President of the Mess Committee, for which he became the infamous “Bottle Major” – a role well suited to his undimmable spirit and to a character shaped in environments far less forgiving than the dining room.