[3] Taylor was a bachelor,[4] and an enthusiastic rugby football player,[5] when he enlisted on 17 April 1916 into the university's Training Company of the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force.
His physical examination showed him to be 5 feet 7 3/4 inches tall, dark complected, with black hair, hazel eyes, and a scar on his left jaw.
The two ex-naval pilots thus touched off the chain of events that led to the death of the war's greatest ace, Manfred von Richthofen in that day's dogfighting.
[11] The following morning, on another squadron mission, Taylor joined Robert Foster and three other pilots in capturing a German two-seater at Albert, France.
German ace Hans Weiss, flying a Fokker Triplane, attacked one of Taylor's squadronmates a mile south of Cerisy, France.
Wilfrid May and Stearne Tighe Edwards helped force the German triplane to ground and its pilot to a prisoner of war camp.