Richard Butler (General, 1870)

Sir Richard Harte Keatinge Butler KCB , KCMG (born August 28, 1870 - April 22, 1935 ) was a British Army officer , most recently a Lieutenant-General .

Life

Butler was born the son of military doctor Colonel ER Butler and educated at Harrow School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst . In 1890 he was accepted as a Second Lieutenant in the Dorsetshire Regiment , where he was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1892 and Captain in 1894 . In the Second Boer War he served as an adjutant and in the mounted infantry . Here acquired the brevet rank of major . In 1906 he graduated from Staff College and was from 1911 General Staff Officer (GSO2) at Aldershot Command. The promotion to Lieutenant Colonel took place in 1913.

At the beginning of the First World War he commanded the 2nd Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers as part of the 4th Division of the British Expeditionary Force . He took over the 3rd Infantry Brigade in November 1914 and became Chief of Staff (BGGS) of the I Corps under Charles Monro in 1915 . In June 1915, his sponsor Douglas Haig brought him to the staff of his First Army . He received the rank of major-general and was proposed by Haig, when he took command of the BEF in December 1915, as his chief of staff, which Haig's superior William Robertson prevented. Instead, Butler became the BEF's deputy chief of staff under Launcelot Kiggell .

In February 1918 Butler received command of the British III Corps, which he led in the spring of 1918 in the defense of the German Michael Offensive and from summer as part of the Fourth Army under General Rawlinson in the Battle of Amiens and in the Hundred Days Offensive . After the end of the war he was given command of a division of the Rhine Army , and later of the 1st Division in Aldershot. In 1923 he was promoted to lieutenant-general and in 1924 received command of the British Army's Western Command , which he held until 1928. He then lived in Shawbury , Shropshire until his death .

literature

• Tim Travers: The Killing Ground. The British Army, the Western Front & the Emergence of Modern War, 1900-1918. Pen & Sword, 2009, Appendix II, p. 238.

Web links

• Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery