INTRODUCTION

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Kenneth Taylor, photographed on the occasion of his visit to the Green Howards Regimental Museum in September 2005. He was then aged 87.		The book used by Kenneth Taylor for his diary.		A group of Officers of the Green Howards (6th Battalion?) taken sometime in 1944. Kenneth Taylor is 3rd from right, centre row.

In 1944, Lieutenant Kenneth Taylor of the Green Howards recorded his experiences in an ‘illegal’ wartime diary.

Mr Taylor presented a transcript of his diary to the Green Howards Regimental Museum. Serving soldiers were forbidden from keeping diaries, so he wrote his entries secretly every evening in a ‘liberated’ German exercise book. In it he details his experiences in 1944 from D-Day in June through to the end of the year.

With the 6th Battalion The Green Howards he moved through France and Belgium into Holland, arriving at the Nijmegen Bridge across the River Waal just a few days after its capture by the Allied troops. The bridge was a vital objective on the advance of Allies into Germany.

Kenethn Taylor, who was promoted Captain at the end of October 1944, spent several weeks in the Nijmegen area, with some time of rest in Brussels. In late November 50th Division, of which the 6th Battalion The Green Howards was part, was broken up, and Ken returned to England, and there his diary ended.

A fluent French speaker, he was sent soon afterwards as Liaison Officer with the Belgian Army as the 21st Army Group advanced through Belgium. In Brussels, recently liberated, he met Françoise, a young artist, whom he married.

We are delighted to be able to present his diary on this website. Kenneth Taylor's diary can also be read on his son's website, http://www.patricktaylor.com/war-diary-1.

The diary is presented in "Chapters" on this website, each of which can be accessed from the Index below. At the end of the diary, we have compiles a list of the names that have been mentione din the diary, and the Chapters in which these names can be found.

INDEX