George Butterworth and contemporaries

[BBMmk2]

#8 & 9: Pabsy, thank you so much for those posts!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well,I don't really want to say I told you so but I did tell you so.

- you did, indeed (and I believed you then, even before the proof was so eloquently provided)!

[Pabmusic]

Here’s the official dispatch of 13 Battalion Durham Light Infantry about the action in which Butterworth died. The trench system is the old German front line. Munster Alley is a German communication trench linking the old front line with the 2nd trench. Butterworth Trench was a new trench dug within the previous week (supervised by GSKB) from where a two-pronged attack could be launched against Munster Alley.

68 Infantry Brigade

Official War Battalion Dispatch – 5th August, 1916

0005 hours. Ordered OC ‘C’ Coy 10 NF to proceed up Gloster Alley and relieve Lt Butterworth in Butterworth Trench.

0010 hours. Ordered Lt Butterworth (EB 169) as follows:
“proceed round the loop with your company and form up there for the attack. Take bombs and tools. Move as quickly as possible”.

Note: Lt. Butterworth was prevented from carrying out order by own artillery fire.

0040 hours. Brigadier on advice of Brigadier Major decided not to carry out another attack.

0147 hours. Capt Lincoln OC ‘C’ Coy 10 NF telephoned “being heavily shelled by our artillery”.

0148 hours. Lt Beale 10th West Ridings phoned he had taken up position in OG2 to which he had been ordered by Brigadier after it had been evacuated by ‘C’ Coy 10 NF.

0207 hours. Lt Davenport found our guns were shelling his platoon on the left of Butterworth Trench.

0220 hours. Lt Clark found that Lt Target was killed and most of his men, that he was collecting men of ‘D’ Coy under 2nd Lts Sant and Atkinson and sending them up Munster Alley.

0253 hours. Sent following message to Lt Butterworth at ‘B’ Coy:
"Send a strong bombing platoon up Munster Alley to our block".

Note: Owing to our artillery shelling our front line Lt Butterworth cannot have received this message until after 3.45 hours.

0333 hours. Asked Lt Clark to supply 2nd Lt Batty with 10 men to go rouns to W entrance of Torr Trench and try to get trench mortar from the Anzacs.

0340 hous. Received from Lt Clarke:
"We must have reinforcements up at once. The platoon of ‘A’ Coy has not turned up and the men I have got are being kept there with revolvers".

0341 hours. Gave Lt Batty message for Lt Butterworth to reinforce Munster Alley with one platoon at once.

0419 hours. Forward observation reported that our party at Munster Alley was being heavily bombed but we were apparently holding our own.

0443 hours. The Brigadier sent 25 men from another unit to relieve Butterworth.

0445 hours. Lt Butterworth killed.

Casualties 5th August :

Lt G S Kaye-Butterworth, Lt N A Target killed;
2nd Lts Rees and Batty wounded.
Other ranks : 4 killed, 18 wounded, 3 shell shock, 5 missing.


Brigadier-General H. Page-Croft, CMG, MP, commanding 68 Brigade wrote to Sir Alexander Butterworth (GSKB was an only child; his mother was already dead) that he had visited Munster Alley where:

[the 13th Battalion DLI] won 100 yards after a very hot fight, and I went up there at 4 am to find the bomb [ie: hand grenade] fight still progressing but the 13th holding their own. Your son was in charge, and the trench was very much blown in and shallow, and I begged him to keep his head down. He was cheery and inspiring his tired men to secure the position that had been won earlier in the night, and I felt that all was well with him there. The Germans had been bombing our wounded, and the men all round him were shooting Germans who showed themselves.

[Stanfordian]

I've never been able to discover if Butterworth ever has lessons from Sir C.V. Stanford although I reckon he was close/part of his circle at the RCM.

[Pabmusic]

I've never been able to discover if Butterworth ever has lessons from Sir C.V. Stanford although I reckon he was close/part to his circle at the RCM.

I'm afraid not. He was at the RCM for just 11 months as a mature student. His composition teacher was Charles Wood. He left because he was fed up.

He was essentially self-taught, though Thomas Dunhill at Eton was influential.

Rather than belonging to the Bullingdon Club, he was elected President of POP at Eton. The defeated candidate was John Maynard Keynes.

[Historian]

Thank you for this extract from the War Diary; most interesting. My grandfather fought with the Durhams, but in another battalion. Depressingly, their regimental museum was closed earlier on this year.

[BBMmk2]

Again, thank you p[abs for that most illuminating of accounts that I have seen in relating to Lt Butterworth's action on the Front. Poor man.

[Pabmusic]

Thank you for this extract from the War Diary; most interesting. My grandfather fought with the Durhams, but in another battalion. Depressingly, their regimental museum was closed earlier on this year.

He seems to have really enjoyed it all (his own diary testifies to that) so I'm not entirely sure that he'd have returned to civilian life, let alone music...

[Historian]

Many veterans felt that their post-war lives lacked the comradeship and purpose they had found during the war. However, very few 'temporary gentlemen' carried on in the service afterwards, as officers who had commanded companies (or even battalions) had to revert to their junior peacetime ("substantive") rank. Peacetime soldiers found the bull and regulation of 'proper' soldiering were of limited appeal.

[Serial_Apologist]

Many veterans felt that their post-war lives lacked the comradeship and purpose they had found during the war. However, very few 'temporary gentlemen' carried on in the service afterwards, as officers who had commanded companies (or even battalions) had to revert to their junior peacetime ("substantive") rank. Peacetime soldiers found the bull and regulation of 'proper' soldiering were of limited appeal.

Isn't that sad - that ordinary mortals find less comradeship and purpose in civilian peacetime than they do in battle?

It seems to say a lot about the lack of fulfilment and sense of belonging that existed back then, and, dare I say it, in today's society. Doubtless "the cause" thus becomes secondary to the experiences derived from involvement therein - "involvement" (and the sense therein) being the operative word. After all, there was nothing in the gentle personality expressed in Butterworth's pre-war music to prepare one for his apparent enjoyment of the context that would lead to his death. One is reminded of the youngsters going off to sacrifice themselves for Islamic fundamentalism, and their families and friends saying afterwards that the last thing they would have expected them to do would have been to make such a choice. Yet Whitman, in the American Civil War, and RVW in World War I, came out of it oppositely transformed.

Many theories more-or-less in common have been put forward to explain this phenomenon - groupthink, and so on - but in the absence of case history studies it's easy, perhaps too easy, to conclude that hardwired aspects of character must go some way to explaining it.

[Stanfordian]

I'm afraid not. He was at the RCM for just 11 months as a mature student. His composition teacher was Charles Wood. He left because he was fed up.

He was essentially self-taught, though Thomas Dunhill at Eton was influential.

Rather than belonging to the Bullingdon Club, he was elected President of POP at Eton. The defeated candidate was John Maynard Keynes.

Hiya Pab,

The Stanford connection is there to Butterworth if indirectly as Charles Wood and Thomas Dunhill were pupils of Stanford.

[Serial_Apologist]

Hiya Pab,

The Stanford connection is there to Butterworth if indirectly as Charles Wood and Thomas Dunhill were pupils of Stanford.

Now, there's a name: when does one ever hear of any music by Thomas Dunhill being broadcast by the BBC? We used to sing anthems by him when I was at school, and as far as I remember, enjoyed singing them.

[EdgeleyRob]

Now, there's a name: when does one ever hear of any music by Thomas Dunhill being broadcast by the BBC? We used to sing anthems by him when I was at school, and as far as I remember, enjoyed singing them.

There's a rather good (IMO) violin sonata on this excellent cd S_A

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dunhill-Bantock-Stanford-English-Sonatas/dp/B00561D2XK

[EdgeleyRob]

Thanks as always Pabmusic for your interesting posts

[Bryn]

Dunhill? Dunhill? Wasn't he replaced in our ̶a̶f̶confections by Haribo? [I've already got me coat.]