On this Remembrance Sunday I am writing about one of St Leonard’s war dead, Sergeant Observer Richard William Butler, R.A.F.
The Hastings & St Leonards Observer, 1 March 1941, had this notice:
ON ACTIVE SERVICE. BUTLER – On May 26th, 1940, previously reported missing, now presumed killed in action, Richard William Butler (Dick), sergeant observer, R.A.F., aged 24, dearly beloved and only son of Lieut and Mrs B.L. Butler, of 1, Maze Hill-mansions, St Leonards, and Quebec; also brother of Dorothy and Joan. – Canadian papers please copy.
His official record at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is numbered 2689678. He was aged 24, and served in the 88th Squadron. Sergeant Butler is buried in Joint Grave 1-2, Haraucourt Cemetery, France. His CWGC record includes a photo of his tombstone with a framed photo leaning against it, taken by Johan Pauwels, as given below.
The World War II Index to Allied Airmen Roll of Honour, 1939-1945 gives some valuable information. His ‘ship’ was a Battle 1 and this aircraft was said to have been ‘Shot Down Between Bulson and Haraucourt During A Raid on the Sedan Battle Area, 26 May 1940.’ His base was Les Grandes-Chappelles, France.
The make was a Fairey Battle Mk. 1, a light bomber, L5467, whose crew of three all died: Pilot Officer Colin Cecil Robert Anderson, Sergeant Richard W. Butler, and Sergeant Edmund Wilks. Pilot Officer Anderson, who was 22, shares Joint Grave 1-2 with Sergeant Butler. Sergeant Wilks was 25. He is in Grave 3, so that the three comrades are together in the cemetery just as they were in life. The cemetery is in fact part of the local church graveyard, with five RAF crew burials.
The German Army’s invasion through the Ardennes of Belgium had begun on the 10 May 1940. On the 13 May they crossed the river Meuse in France after building temporary bridges for their tanks and infantry near Sedan. The Germans defended the bridges both with fighter planes and with anti-aircraft guns. Attacks by British air crews on the bridging sites in this obsolete, slow bomber had suffered terrible losses in unsuccessful attacks on the 12th and 14th May. The Aviation Safety Network has an entry for L5467, stating that it crashed 6 km southeast of Sedan. This is about five km from the Meuse. The link includes an outline of the appearance of the Fairey Battle.
I tried to find out more about his family. This proved quite hard. I could only find glimpses of them, and much is unknown, and one can only speculate on motives. Of course, nobody can possible know the full story about a family.
In the 1891 census Richard’s father Bertram Leonard Butler was a six-year-old at Sittingbourne, Kent, where he was born. His father was a bookseller’s clerk from Ticehurst. In the 1901 census Bertram was 16, with his family as a post office employee. He is presumably the Bertram Butler, clerk, who, aged 24, sailed into Quebec in August 1908.
Bertram, as a clerk, was married on the 3 April 1912 at Montreal to Nellie Ryder, described in the marriage record as of Kent. In the 1911 census in Margate she had been a 19-year-old telegraph assistant born at Westgate on Sea. Her employment records survive, telling us that she worked in that capacity from September 1903 until the 17 February 1912, when she was at Leeds, having earned a total of £78. As both she and Bertram had worked for the Post Office in Kent it is possible that they already knew each other, which would explain their marriage only about six weeks later in Canada. The Post Office records state that she was recommended for a marriage gratuity, again suggesting that she left to get married in Canada.
Richard was baptised on the 15 September 1915, St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Granby, Quebec, having been born on the 20 August.
In 1917 Bertram enlisted in the Canadian Army from Blondin, Quebec, as a Superintendent of the Laurentian Club who had served in the 4th Bn., Buffs in England. This meant that he had been a Territorial with the Royal East Kent Regiment. He served in France and was demobilised as a Lieutenant of the 14th Bn., date undisclosed.
At some point the couple returned to England, but not together. In the 1921 census Nellie was a ‘visitor’ in Margate, performing home duties, with her Quebec province born children Dorothy, 8; Richard, 5; and Joan, 4. Nellie’s sister in law Bessie Ryder, an unemployed nurse, was also in the household. She was single, and was actually Nellie’s elder sister. The sister in law mention hinted that the head of the household, Bertram, was temporarily absent but I could not find Bertram in the 1921 census for either Canada or England. I do not know exactly what was going on, or why: in September 1913 British shipping records had listed Nellie, Dorothy and Bessie Ryder arriving in Liverpool from Montreal, and in June 1920 Nellie and the three children arrived in London from Montreal, together with the faithful Bessie Ryder, intending to live at 16 St Helen’s Park Road, Hastings.
In the 1925 electoral registers for St Leonards Bertram and Nellie were voters at the second floor flat at 30 Magdalen Road. In August 1928 Bertram arrived in Southampton, a 43-year-old clerk, intending to live permanently in England and giving an address in Cheam, Surrey. By 1931 they were in a flat on the first and second floors at 29 West Hill, later named West Hill Road. I was reliant on those electoral registers available online, so it is possible that they were there for longer. In the 30 September 1939 Register, a listing by address of UK civilians for rationing purposes, Nellie Butler was at a basement flat, 5A Grosvenor Gardens, a married woman, born 18 August 1881, in the household of her married daughter Dorothy McDonald, whose husband Henry was a wireman for the Post Office. As Richard was not listed he was probably already in the RAF, especially as he was already a sergeant at the time of his death.
Where was Bertram ?
He was not in the 1939 Register. A family tree on Ancestry claims that Bertram died in 1971 in Vancouver, aged 86, the husband of June. If so, this should have meant that he had divorced Nellie. In April 1940, at Ottawa, Bertram Leonard Butler married June Lantz — as a widower. He named his father as William Sayer Butler. This was indeed the father, and would explain why Bertram appears to have disappeared from St Leonards on Sea after 1931; why Nellie was not with him in 1939; and would mean that the mention of the Maze Hill Mansions address in the 1941 newspaper citation was ambiguous, as I had assumed from it that she and Bertram were still a couple.
Nellie Butler died in about 1974 in Devon, aged 92.