Disregard For Own Life

The award of a Victoria Cross was sometimes for exceptional bravery in the face of the enemy but for events that did not necessarily entail heroic charges or battles directly engaging the foe. The award to Private William Boynton Butler was a case in poin

William Boynton Butler was born in Armley, Leeds, Yorkshire, on 20 November 1894. He was the illegitimate son of William Boynton, a colliery worker, and his partner Caroline Butler, a wool weaver. In fact, his parents married shortly after his birth in December that year, by which point he had already been given his mother’s surname as his own surname and his father’s surname as his second Christian name. William Butler’s childhood was spent at his family’s modest home in Hunslet, Carr, Leeds, where he lived with his parents and his brother and three sisters. He was educated locally at St Oswald’s School in Hunslet, which he left around 1907. Butler, who was quiet and unassuming, spent some seven years working down the pit as a pony driver, in the same coal mine as his father, before enlisting. He eventually joined one of the newly created ‘Bantam Battalions’ (for men of less than 5 foot 3 inches in height), the 17th (2nd Leeds Pals), West Yorkshire Regiment, in Leeds on 9 January 1915. He had previously been turned down for the military on the grounds that he was too short at 5 feet 2½ inches tall. Once in the Army, Butler was attached to a Trench Mortar Battery and was trained at Ilkley, Yorkshire. By June 1916, he was serving on the Western Front attached to the 106th Trench Mortar Battery. This was also known as a Stokes Mortar battery after the name of the weapon’s inventor. On 6 August 1917, Butler was in charge of a mortar on the British line east of L’Empire, France. His precise position was between Cambrai and St Quentin, some 60 miles south of the Third Battle of Ypres, which commenced in Flanders on 31 July – exactly a week earlier. In fact, on 5 August, the 17th West Yorkshires had been relieved from their front-line position by the 19th Durham Light Infantry, returning to billets at L’Empire.

QUICK THINKING AND BRAVERY

The next day, however, was misty and the enemy, apparently taking advantage of the favourable weather conditions, successfully raided Guillemont Farm at around 03.30 hours with a force of some 150 troops. Within 45 minutes, the West

FULL MILITARY FUNERAL

(Lord Ashcroft Collection) ■ The Victoria Cross medal group belonging to William Boynton Butler. From left to right: Victoria Cross, War Medal, Victory Medal, King George VI Coronation Medal, Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal, French Croix de Guerre.

(HMP) ■ Cap badge of the West Yorkshire Regiment.

(AS) ■ As was often the case with soldiers of the First World War, photographs were not always available if family portraits did not exist. This was the situation with William Butler, for whom only a grainy newspaper ‘mug shot’ survives.

■ Left: A group of Victoria Cross winners photographed on 5 December 1917. Second from the right is Private William Boynton Butler. His short stature is clearly evident in this image. The others are, left to right, Private Michael O’Rourke of 7th (1st British Columbia) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, Sergeant James Ockendon, 1st Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusilers, and (extreme right) Corporal Ernest Egerton, 16th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters.

(HMP) ■ Right: Men of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry fuse Stokes mortar shells near Wieltjie, 1 October 1917.

■ Left: The British Stokes Mortar could fire as many as 25 bombs per minute and had a maximum range of 800 yards. Extremely useful in the muddy trenches of the Western Front, a mortar round could be aimed to fall directly into trenches. Unfortunately, a misfire resulted in a round falling into William Butler’s trench on 6 August 1917.