A Collection of Medals to Members of the Nobility and the Royal Household

The Great War C.M.G., ‘Battle of Loos’ D.S.O. group of six awarded to Brigadier-General the Honourable L. J. P. Butler, Irish Guards, who commanded the 2nd Battalion at the Battle of Loos during their first experience of War, September 1915: ‘Jerry did himself well at Loos upon us innocents. We went into it, knowing no more that our own dead what was coming, and Jerry fair lifted us out of it with machine-guns’, an experience where, over five punishing days and nights, the battalion suffered 324 casualties

The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, C.M.G., Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel, obverse central medallion slightly loose, with integral top riband bar; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, top clasp a tailor’s copy (Lieut. Hon. L. J. P. Butler, Irish Gds:); 1914 Star, with clasp (Major Hon: L. J. P. Butler. I. Gds:); British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaves (Brig. Gen. Hon. L. J. P. Butler.) mounted court-style as worn and housed with the recipient’s related miniature awards in a glazed display frame, good very fine (6) £2800-3200

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C.M.G. London Gazette 4 June 1917.

D.S.O. London Gazette 14 January 1916.

The Honourable Lesley James Probyn Butler was born on 22 April 1876, the second son of the 26th Baron Dunboyne and his wife Caroline, the daughter of Captain George Probyn. Commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Durham Light Infantry on 28 March 1900, having previously served for 113 days in the Militia, he served in South Africa during the Boer War from 1900 to 1901, transferring to the Irish Guards on 20 February 1901. Promoted Lieutenant in the Irish Guards on 1 January 1902, he served as Adjutant from 1 January until 31 December 1907, and was advanced Captain on 27 March 1909. Receiving his Majority on 14 July 1913, he was serving as Brigade-Major of the 8th Infantry Brigade, Southern Command, at the time of the outbreak of the Great War, and went with them to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914. Reported missing on 8 September 1914, he made his way back to his unit and was subsequently appointed to the command of the newly-formed 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards. He served with distinction during the Great War, especially at the Battle of Loos, where he led his battalion on an attack through the Chalk-Pit Wood, 28 September 1915:

‘The attack of their Brigade developed during the course of the day. The four C.O.’s of the Battalions met their Brigadier at the 1st Grenadier Guards Headquarters. He took them to a point just north of Loos, whence they could see Chalk-Pit Wood, and the battered bulk of the colliery head and workings known as Puits 14 bis, together with what few small buildings still stood thereabouts, and told them that he proposed to attack as follows: At half-past two a heavy bombardment lasting for one hour and a half would be delivered on that sector. At four the Second Irish Guards would advance upon Chalk-Pit Wood and would establish themselves on the north-east and south-east faces of it, supported by the 1st Coldstream. The 1st Scots Guards were to advance echeloned to the right rear of the Irish, and to attack Puits 14 bis moving round the south side of Chalk-Pit Wood, covered by heavy fire from the Irish out of the Wood itself. For this purpose, four machine-guns of the Brigade Machine-gun Company were to accompany the latter battalion. The 3rd Grenadiers were to support the 1st Scots in their attack on the Puits. Chalk-Pit Wood at that time existed as a somewhat dishevelled line of smallish trees and brush running from north to south along the edge of some irregular chalk workings which terminated at their north end, in a deepish circular quarry. It was not easy to arrive at its precise shape and size, for the thing, like so much of the war-landscape of France, was seen but once by the men vitally concerned in its features, and thereafter changed outline almost weekly, as gun-fire smote and levelled it from different angles. The orders for the Battalion, after the conference and the short view of the ground, were that No. 3 Company (Captain Wynter) was to advance from their trenches when the bombardment stopped, to the southern end of Chalk-Pit Wood, get through and dig itself in in the tough chalk on the farther side. No. 2 Company (Captain Bird), on the left of No. 3, would make for the centre of the wood, dig in too, on the far side, and thus prolong No. 3’s line up to and including the Chalk-Pit—that is to say, that the two companies would hold the whole face of the Wood. Nos. 1 and 4 Companies were to follow and back up Nos. 3 and 2 respectively. At four o’clock the two leading companies deployed and advanced, “keeping their direction and formation perfectly.” That much could be seen from what remained of Vermelles watertower, where some of the officers of the 1st Battalion were watching, regardless of occasional enemy shell. They advanced quickly, and pushed through to the far edge of the Wood with very few casualties, and those, as far as could be made out, from rifle or machine-gun fire. (Shell-fire had caught them while getting out of their trenches, but, notwithstanding, their losses had not been heavy till then.) The rear companies pushed up to thicken the line, as the fire increased from the front, and while digging in beyond the Wood, 2nd Lieutenant Pakenham-Law was fatally wounded in the head. Digging was not easy work, and seeing that the left of the two first companies did not seem to have extended as far as the Chalk-Pit, at the north of the Wood, the C.O. ordered the last two platoons of No. 4 Company which were just coming up, to bear off to the left and get hold of the place. In the meantime, the 1st Scots Guards, following orders, had come partly round and partly through the right flank of the Irish, and attacked Puits 14 bis, which was reasonably stocked with machine-guns, but which they captured for the moment. Their rush took with them “some few Irish Guardsmen,” with 2nd Lieutenants W. F. J. Clifford and J. Kipling of No. 2 Company who went forward not less willingly because Captain Cuthbert commanding the Scots Guards party had been adjutant to the Reserve Battalion at Warley ere the 2nd Battalion was formed, and they all knew him. Together, this rush reached a line beyond the Puits, well under machinegun fire (out of the Bois Hugo across the Lens–La Bassee road). Here 2nd Lieutenant Clifford was shot and wounded or killed—the body was found later—and 2nd Lieutenant Kipling was wounded and missing. The Scots Guards also lost Captain Cuthbert, wounded or killed, and the combined Irish and Scots Guards party fell back from the Puits and retired “into and through Chalk-Pit Wood in some confusion.” The C.O. and Adjutant, Colonel Butler and Captain Vesey went forward through the Wood to clear up matters, but, soon after they had entered it the Adjutant was badly wounded and had to be carried off. Almost at the same moment, “the men from the Puits came streaming back through the Wood, followed by a great part of the line which had been digging in on the farther side of it.”
Evidently, one and a half hour’s bombardment, against a country-side packed with machine-guns, was not enough to placate it. The Battalion had been swept fro...

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