_89th Division, 353rd Infantry, Company “K”_
Following a retreating German into a house in the town of Boullonville
on September 12, 1918, he fired the remaining two shots in his pistol
through the door and ordered the surrender of the occupants. By his
bravery, coolness and confidence he captured, single-handed, 375
prisoners.]
“He was then twenty-two. He arrived in England in the early part of
1915 to join the British Army, and no military eye could doubt that
the British Army had got a rare recruit. Harry Butters got his first
commission in the 11th Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Afterward his
technical faculty found more congenial scope when he transferred to
the Royal Field Artillery. While training, he stayed a good deal at
the rectory, Stow-on-the-Wold, Glos. The rector writes: ‘He was a
warm-hearted, fearless young officer, as fine an American gentleman as
ever crossed the Atlantic.’ It is much to say, but it is true.”
“His captain writes that, ‘He was with his guns, and no one could have
died in a nobler way. He was one of the brightest, cheeriest boys I
have ever known, and always the life and soul of the mess.... We all
realized his nobility in coming to the help of another country entirely
of his own free will, and understood what a big heart he had. He was
loved by all.’
“He is in it to the finish, indeed, with comrades of his adoption,
who have passed with him. He takes his last sleep out there with so
many of the brave and true where none was braver and truer than he,
and among the recollections of the great war, his name will not be
forgotten. Beaumont will take care of that. In his old college we doubt
not he will have his permanent memorial. In our thoughts the flags of
Britain and America cover his heart with double honor. We shall never
see them entwined again without thinking of him. No American can read
these lines without being proud of him. No Briton can read them without
feelings deeper, more moved than can be said in any words. We are
grateful, as he would have liked, to his America that bred him.”
Mrs. Denis O’Sullivan, the widow of the famous Irish singer who was so
eulogized by Mark Twain in his “Memoirs,” wrote to friends about the
boy she affectionately called “stepson,” though there was no such tie
between them:
“Do you remember in poor Synge’s ‘Riders to the Sea’—the old mother
says that now her last son is drowned, she will be able to sleep o’
nights?
“The harrowing anxiety of every day in this time of war is over for me,
too. On July 22, as you know, Gerard, my first stepson, was killed.
And on August 31, at night, too, my last—Harry Butters—they were both
as dear to me as my own—but Gerard had his own people here—he was not
dependent on me, while in a way, Harry had only me—his sister was
six thousand miles away. I haven’t been able to say much of him these
last months as he had been getting the carbon copies of my letters to
you. Yet it was so often on the tip of my fingers to enlarge upon the
boy—his charm, his capabilities.
“More still upon the drama of his last experiences—from the moment when
he burst into Aldwych his first day in uniform, so big, so startlingly
handsome—above all, so gay—a shout of ‘stepmother!’ that raised the
dust in that crowded, smoky refuge where the hundreds of tired Belgians
looked around in astonishment that anyone left in the world could be so
fresh, so dazzling—through those months of his watch beside his guns or
directing fire from his exposed shell-swept hillside—that awful moment
when the enemy found the range and poured death down upon the shelter
that was no shelter—when all the other officers within call took refuge
there, fourteen in all, Harry, the youngest, but the one who dashed
out under fire to carry what was left of one of his telephonists to
the first-aid station—a poor mangled mass of humanity, still breathing
and crying out, a deed that in a smaller war would have meant the
Victoria Cross, but in this, only one of a thousand such daily—after
it his sudden collapse from the shock—(‘No one knew it, stepmother! I
managed to bluff it through!’) But his colonel had been through the
same experience and backed the doctor up in sending him to the base for
a few days.
“Then his June leave, luckily due anyway, brought him over to No. 7
where he could be petted and taken care of—but it was a quiet Harry—no
less clear-eyed and vigorous, but so, _so_ tired.
“Then Winston Churchill and Garvin trying to make him take three weeks’
extra leave, the boy’s refusal, his return to France, some weeks in the
ammunition column, where, knowing him to be comparatively safe, I could
carry an easier heart, then a hasty line: ‘Just going up to one of the
batteries to replace a casualty. It’s too bad it comes while I’m in
bad shape, but it can’t be helped, and it surely is what I’m here for,
after all. Don’t worry any more than you can help.’
“That was August 22, only short notes after that, though he could find
time to write, ‘I’m going to try to get over to Gerard’s grave. If I
can find some flowers I’ll decorate it for you.’
“His friend, Captain Zamora, to whom he’d given my address, could not
have been with him at the last, for he had also had shell-shock and was
with the ammunition column, but he wrote on the 1st of September that
Harry had been with his guns the night before, when the call came, had
gone in apparently the best of spirits—and the same shell killed him
and his battery commander.
“It has been so beautiful this week. I’ve never seen a harvest-moon
more wonderful. One can only think what a world it is—and Harry and
Gerard both out of it.”