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Transcription
of Seattle P-I obituary
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"Stanley
Charles Taylor, 27, a second lieutenant in the armered tanks
division, was killed in action July 17 in France, his mother,
Mrs. Jer??? Brooks, 1718 Boren Ave., has been informed by
the war department.
"A
Queen Anne High School graduate and former marine hardware
clerk for the Sunde d'Evers Company here, Lieutenant Taylor
joined the Army July 3, 1941. He was shipped overseas in
February of this year."
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Taylor's cousin, Norma Sherer Fitzmaurice, '45, sent us the
following recollections and reports about him. As she indicates,
we're not sure that he was in the Class of '35. We have not
found him in the '35 yearbook and do not have a '36. |
| "On
a personal note, Stan , besides being good-looking, was a
very nice person with a great sense of humor." |
| "I
have another document which states Stan was 23 yrs.& 11
mo. when he was inducted into the service. The news clip states
he joined the service July 3, 1941. Therefore his birthday
must be in August, 1917, so wouldn't he have been 17 in June
of 1935? Maybe it's possible he graduated in 1936. I wonder
if his picture is in either '35 or '36 annual. Stan, according
to another serviceman I contacted, was shot while trying to
get out of the tank he was in." |
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| Both
Stan Taylor, '35?, and Dean Rose, '31, were killed in the area of St.
Lo, France, which is not many miles inland from the Normandy beaches which
the Allies invaded on June 6, 1944, in Operation Overlord, led by General
Dwight Eisenhower. Weeks after the invasion, long past the invasion schedule,
the Allied armies were still stymied by German forces in the area of St.
Lo, finally breaking through on July 17 and 18. Taylor was killed on July
17, as the famous "Breakout at St. Lo" was taking place. (Dean
Rose was killed on August 2 in the St. Lo area.) Among the notable aspects
of the St. Lo battles are the extraordinaryly heavy preliminary bombing
(partially misguided and tragic, done on successive days in attempts to
get it right) just ahead of advancing Allied forces, the coordination
of planes and tanks, and the subsequent emergence of General George Patton
as a great commander (partly receiving the credit due to another unit,
according to one account). While supposedly the Battle of St. Lo has not
received the full treatment it deserves in terms of books written by military
historians, there is much about it on the Internet. Not having time to
read much of it, let alone rank the best or most accurate of it, we can
offer only a few links to those with further interest, and hope that any
such persons will respond to our memorial pages with anything they find
relevant to the war experiences of Taylor and Rose. |
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