2nd Lieutenant Henry Augustus Butters
109TH BRIGADE, ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY
IN 1916, THE UNITED STATES had not yet entered the war. It was, however, not wholly unusual to find Americans serving in the British or French armies. One officer’s family were distinctly unimpressed at his choice to do so, but 24-year-old Harry Butters of California summarised his reasoning succinctly in a letter home:
I find myself a soldier amongst millions fighting for all I believe right and civilised and humane, against a power which is evil and which threatens the existence of all the right we prize and the freedom we enjoy. It may seem to you that for me this is all uncalled for … but I tell you that not only am I willing to give my life to this enterprise … but I firmly believe … that never will I have an opportunity to gain so much honourable advancement for my own soul or to do so much for the world’s progress.
Harry was raised partly in Cape Town and educated for a time at Beaumont College, a Jesuit school in Windsor, before returning to the US. He was 6ft 2in, a giant among his British colleagues and the only son of a successful businessman, who occupied his time with mines and railways. Keen on horses and cars, ‘a crack shot and a fine polo player’, Harry had a bubbly personality and was vibrant and engaging. ‘To talk with him was to receive a new and promising revelation of the mind of young America.’ One notable personage quite taken with him was Winston Churchill. ‘I met him quite by chance in his observation post neat Ploegsteert and was charmed by his extraordinary fund of wit and gaiety,’ the future prime minister recalled. ‘His conversation was delightful, full at once of fun and good sense … A whole table could sit and listen to him with the utmost interest and pleasure.’ The pair hit it off so well that on leave, Harry was invited to dine with the Churchills and accompany the politician on a trip to the theatre.
2nd Lieutenant Henry Butters on horseback. (Authors’ collection)
Harry had arrived in England early in 1915 to join the British Army, vehemently believing that German ambition and aggressiveness must be crushed. ‘Yes, my dearest folks, we are indeed doing the world’s work over here, and I am in it to the finish.’ On being commissioned, he spent a few weeks in the infantry with a battalion of the Royal Warwickshires, but his technical mind called for something more and he transferred to the artillery. By August 1916 he had already spent quite some time at the front, and in the spring of 1916 had suffered a breakdown, about which he was frank and open. ‘This comes as rather a jolt,’ he said. ‘But I am forced to realise that it is by no means a sudden shock.’ He was moved back to work with the Divisional Ammunition Column further to the rear, supplying the batteries with their shells and the infantry with their bullets. He wrote home of his experience. ‘Men stand up to [the war] in various ways,’ he explained. ‘The strength of religion, lack of imagination or natural phlegmatic temperament, a sense of humour and an ability to bluff one’s self out of it, are the usual means of endurance.’ But something in him had snapped and he acknowledged he needed a rest. He admitted that his state of mind was troubling. ‘I lived with some very dark thoughts, indeed, before coming out of it.’
After a week he claimed to be on the mend, but all too soon casualties among the officers in front might mean he would have to be recalled. ‘Already,’ he wrote, ‘although the sound of a shell sends my heart action up … I am beginning to take a more normal view of things. The moments of depression come farther apart, and the rest of the time I see things in a much more endurable light.’ Harry was contemplating leaving to work with anti-aircraft guns, a safer prospect than an artillery brigade, when at the end of July his stepmother’s son died. Twenty-year-old Gerard had survived the gruelling onset of the battle around La Boisselle, only to be killed on 22nd July. A month later Harry wrote to her to let her know that the inevitable had happened. Casualties in the brigade meant he would have to rejoin one of the batteries. He still didn’t feel himself, ‘but it can’t be helped and it’s surely what I’m here for after all,’ he reflected.
On 25th August Harry’s brigade moved into the dangerous position in Caterpillar Valley, where it immediately suffered four casualties. The following day the unit was registering on targets to the south-east of Guillemont before the weather took a turn for the worse and began to interfere with infantry operations towards the village. More casualties mounted among the artillery as the rain lashed down. Bombardments were ordered, then cancelled again. In the meantime, German reinforcements had arrived.
Harry Butters’ headstone at Meaulte Military Cemetery featuring the inscription that he requested for himself. (Alexandra Churchill)
As the month drew to a close, enemy batteries unleashed a fierce torrent of shells on the British lines, which usually meant a counter-attack was coming. It was launched on the 31st, the first fine day for more than a week. As the Germans pushed the British back into the environs of Delville Wood, to the north-east of the battery, the enemy’s gunners hammered the British artillery in Caterpillar Valley. All day and into the night the shellfire on batteries such as Harry’s was unrelenting. The bombardment included gas shells, and so all day long Harry directed gunfire in his mask. Shortly after 11pm he was taking a breather in a dugout near the gun positions. ‘The Germans were putting over a heavy barrage of gas shells and the air became very poisonous and oppressive,’ one of his fellow officers explained. ‘Harry said “it’s time we moved out of this” and went out. Immediately he was outside a gas shell hit him direct.’ His companion removed his gas mask to check the extent of his injuries, but Harry was already dead. The enemy bombardment had claimed nineteen men of his artillery brigade in a single day.
Preparing for the idea that he might have to go back up to the brigade, Harry had written to a chaplain friend, leaving instructions for a ‘cheery’ letter to be written to his sister in Piedmont if the worst should happen. ‘How I got it, what I was doing, when I went up … location of grave, etc., etc. … Please reiterate to her how much my heart was in this cause, and how more than willing I am to give my life to it. Say all the nice things you can about me, but no lies …’ He also had instructions for his burial. ‘Try and have the Roman Catholic padre plant me and you can tell her that, it will give her greater consolation than anything, and please put after my name on the wooden cross, the bare fact that I was an American. I want this particularly, and want her to know that it has been done so.’ They followed his instructions to the letter. Harry Butters was placed in a coffin and buried by a Roman Catholic Chaplain under a Union Jack. As many of his officer friends as could get away stood as a trumpeter played the last post. Harry Butters ‘an American citizen’ was laid to rest at Meaulte Military Cemetery, plot E.27.