Turner Donovan Military Books - The world’s finest selection of rare and out-of-print books on British military history from 1800 to 1945
  Stock last updated on 07 May 2024
 
   

Letters written in the Trenches near Ypres between May & September, 1915, by H.M. Butterworth, 9th Rifle Brigade, who fell in action on September 25th, 1915. 1st Ed., 219x142mm, 84pp., portrait frontis. Wellington, NZ: Whitcombe & Tombs. 1916  #66577
[HLMainPic] Hugh Montagu Butterworth was Ed. at Marlborough & University College, Oxford, but left prematurely when his family emigrated to New Zealand. Became a schoolmaster at Wanganui College & returned to England in 1915 where he obtained a commission in the 9th (S) Battalion Rifle Brigade. He was killed in action during a diversionary attack near Ypres, in support of the Loos offensive, on 25th September 1915, has no known grave & is commemorated on the Menin Gate. He was twenty-nine. Memorial containing obituaries and tributes plus lengthy letters from the front during four months in the Ypres Salient, the last written before going into his last action: "I am leaving this in the hands of the Transport Officer, and if I get knocked out he will send it on to you. We are going into a big thing. It will be my pleasant duty to leap lightly over the parapet and lead D company over the delectable confusion of old trenches, crump holes, barbed wire, that lies between us and the Bosche, and take a portion of his line. Quo facto I shall then proceed to bomb down various communication trenches and take his second line. In the very unlikely event of my being alive by then I shall dig like blazes and if God is good, stop the Bosche counter-attack..." Orig. apple green cloth, titled in black to front board, little rubbed at extremities o/w VG & scarce. See illustrations on our website.   £220

     




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