Walter was born on 7th November 1892 and was the youngest of the five children of John and Clara Butler. His father was a cashier for a wholesale draper and his mother died in the London hospital, Whitechapel Road on 4th September 1909. Walter had only recently left Ilford County High School aged 16, when his mother died, and he helped his family financially by taking on a job as a commercial clerk. He had attended the school between 11th September 1905 and 29th July 1909 and passed both the Oxford Junior and Senior examinations. Whilst at Ilford County High School, he was a member of the school’s Philatelic Society and exhibited his nearly complete collection of Chilean stamps in 1911. His family home was in Coventry Road, Ilford.
Walter is recorded on a supplementary list for the school’s first Roll of Honour. It gives his regiment as the Queen Victoria’s Rifles. Rifleman Butler’s letter to the school was included within the Christmas 1915 edition of the school magazine, introduced by the editor as follows;
‘Rifleman W. Butler, Queen Victoria’s Rifles, remarks on the care with which the French make their trenches and dug-outs. He has seen a regimental badge worked out in limestone in the earth covering the parapet of a trench. In a dug-out he noticed a cow! She was regularly brought out to graze.
The Q.V.R.’s were not very actively engaged in the September fighting, but finding “the Army is a marvellous organisation, especially for finding jobs to fill up one’s spare time.” So Butler and his comrades have been actively engaged in mining.
“Our party last night had the nearest escape they will ever have. The two mines we should have been working in were blown up by the Germans. Half of our fellows had just come out of one sap head to proceed about 40 yards along the trench to the next sap when the one they had left was blown up. Immediately afterwards up went the other! I was some distance behind with a party bringing up logs, and we got a free switchback ride. To make matters worse, the Germans started to put over all kinds of stuff- shells, shrapnel, torpedoes, grenades, etc. Under this fire we started to dig our fellows out, and a fine job it was.”’
The date of Walter’s death, 1st July 1916, the first day of the Somme. In the Autumn 1916 Chronicles, he is recorded as missing. His name is on the Thiepval Memorial.
His brother, Edward, a bank clerk before the war, also served in the army. He survived and was demobilised in 1919.
Research by Andrew Emeny, History Teacher at ICHS
Sources:
Ancestry.com
ICHS school records and magazines
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Note
Ilford County High School started life as the Park Higher Grade School in 1901 in Balfour Road, Ilford. It was renamed Ilford County High School (or initially County High School, Ilford) in the years after the school’s management was transferred from Ilford School Board to Essex Education Committee in 1904.