World War I Memorial Stone in the Black Forest, Germany, for Egham Airman, Lieutenant Reginald Arthur Butler.

 Reginald Arthur Butler was 20 years old at the outbreak of the First World War, and had trained as a cadet at The Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College, H M S Worcester, Greenhithe, for two years before serving for three years as an apprentice at sea, afterwards obtaining a Second Officer's certificate and serving on several of H.M. ships. He was then transferred to the Royal Engineers, and saw 15 months as a lieutenant in France with the Independent Air Force, where he was finally transferred to the R.A.F.

 He was the gunner/ observer in a two-seater de Havilland bomber as part of an air raid on the Mauser weapons and munitions factories in Oberndorf when, on the return, the pilot of the plane was killed  by gunfire from either the anti-aircraft batteries or from a pursuing German fighter plane. The de Havilland caught fire, and as it headed down towards the woods Lieutenant Butler jumped out just above the tree-tops, but without a parachute, and fell to his death in the forest near the village of Winzeln.  His body was not found for several days, but he was subsequently buried locally at Oberndorf, and later reinterred in the Niederzwehren War Graves Cemetery, near Kassel in Germany.

 The local people from Fluorn and Winzel at that time erected a wooden cross out of respect to mark the site where Lieutenant Butler was found, and the cross was maintained, replaced periodically, and flowers were regularly placed there for many years.  In the 1950s a local glider club arranged for the wooden cross to be replaced by a granite boulder bearing a plaque in his memory. An arrangement for the periodic maintenance of the memorial stone seems to have continued for several years and then lapsed. Care of the memorial has more recently been undertaken by Dr. Dieter Mönch associated with a project under the auspices of the Oberndorf museum, the plaque has been renovated, and the whole episode of the Oberndorf bombing and the story of the memorial stone has been documented. (Ref-1).

 Dr. Mönch established contact in 2013 with the community in Egham, UK, and through cooperation with Barrie Reynolds the research report and other related newspaper articles have been translated and made available, and contact with living relatives of Lt. R.A.Butler was established in 2018.

 R.A Butler is also commemorated on the Egham War Memorial in St John’s Church, Egham.

For further details see: https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/683954

Barrie Reynolds