Hero veteran who issued chilling war warning to future generations dies at 98

A veteran who broke 80 years of silence to warn about the horrors of World War II has passed away. Earlier this year just before VE Day, Ronald Butcher, 98, spoke to The Mirror in an exclusive interview to warn about the “dreadful waste” of war.

The decorated Merchant Navy sailor left his family astonished as he revealed his dangerous childhood at sea and his numerous brushes with death. But he decided to speak out to urge the world: “We must learn from the past and be peacemakers. Keep telling your children. Get it in their little heads what happened.”

His daughter Christine Lincoln, 61, said he slipped away on Monday afternoon after telling her ‘night night’. “He’d been to the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in Norfolk and rose to the occasion but afterwards he was weak and wobbly,” she explained.

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“Then on Monday he was fading and he said ‘where are we?’ in a whisper, and I told him he was at home in bed and said, ‘Dad, if you’re tired, you can go to sleep now’. And he replied ‘night night’ and was gone. It was so fast. The cat was lying next to him and didn't move until the undertakers came.”

She told how his trips with the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans led to him opening up in May for the first time about his wartime experiences.

She said: “After he went to Liberation Day in the Netherlands and D-Day in Normandy he came alive. But he never ever saw himself as a hero, he said he wore his medals for his friends.” Another of his five daughters, Pauline Killaspy, 62, added: “He said it was showing off.

“Before these trips he was starting to be very quiet and he would just sit in his chair. So the fact he went on them, prolonged his life. It brought a new lease of life.”

Christine added: “He used to squint his right eye but suddenly during the first trip, they were both wide open.” Their dad told The Mirrorhow he was 13 or 14 years old when he was working on a minesweeper climbing on ‘pin mines’ to defuse them. He was lowered on a rope by the waist, with a spanner tied to his wrist.

At 15 he was in the Merchant Navy when his boat was sunk by a torpedo on his first mission. And at 17, still not an adult, he was off the coast of Normandy for D-Day fishing parts of bodies out of the sea with a fish hook.

Opening up about his jaw-dropping war, he told The Mirror about the time he was torpedoed: “I was left treading water in burning oil with my mates for three hours and we were calling out to each other and gradually the calls became less and less. Three hours I was in the water… they were getting the injured out first.”

He was eventually rescued by the RNLI but doesn’t know what happened to his crewmates in the disaster just off the English Channel. He was sent to his local hospital in Thetford to recover. His mum and dad were left having to calm him down as he ‘screamed in the night’.

On D-Day in 1944, Ron then found himself off the coast of Normandy when his new ship, the Francis C Harrington, was hit by mines five miles off Juno beach. Ronald was awarded the Legion d’honneur by the French for his service.

They were hit by two mines as they tried to deliver more than 500 troops and their vital supplies to the beaches. Five of his crew were killed. While they waited for the ship to be patched up, they were sitting ducks.

The “terrified” teenager watched as the skies turned black with bombs: “I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. We were all scared. We were five miles off the beach waiting to offload. But as soon as they could see us, they fired on us.

“You didn't know the difference from daylight to darkness. It was midday, and it was dark and horrible. I could see the action on the breaches,” he said, referring to Juno and Omaha. The guns kept going. But the Americans got it worse; they died in their thousands.”

He said an ‘old boy’ on the ship told him: ‘We’ll be all right (HMS) George V is coming’. I said ‘Well, bloody hell, he’d better get his arse here soon!“ When the lead ship did arrive to save them, it let rip.

He said: “When it fired on these pillboxes the Germans built along the coast, the bloody houses in England shook. That’s when I lost my hearing in my right ear.“

The stunned teenager then had to take part in the gruesome task of clearing the bodies from the water below them. “The bodies were floating and sinking. They were in punts, pulling the dead onto the landing craft, pulling bits of legs on.”

His daughter, former nurse Christine from Thetford, said: “Can you imagine the horrors he saw?“ Christine, who lived with her dad at his home in Norfolk, said despite his experiences: “He was such a loving and devoted dad with a dry and wonderful sense of humour.

“You would have never suspected what he had been through and he never let it affect our childhood. He was married for nearly 64 years to our mum Grace, they were devoted to each other and to their children.

“He would get involved in poppy day but he never spoke about what he did during the war growing up. So when he spoke to The Mirror about it all this year, we were surprised.“

He opened up to the Mirror during a week’s trip to the Netherlands ahead of VE Day. During his military career he did at least five convoy crossings of up to 70 ships across the Atlantic, taking things to be repaired in Canada and America, dodging 90ft waves and enemy submarines.

Ron later joined the British Army for more than 30 years as a civilian officer where he met members of the Royal Family, working his way up to become an officer.

Christine said: “He would say, 'War was no good for anybody, no matter what side they are on, they are all somebody’s child, somebody’s loved one'." Her sister Pauline, added: “He used to say ‘war is dreadful’ and ‘what a waste it was’.”

His son in law, Peter Killaspy, agreed: “He was always grateful for his family life. He would say about his friends ‘they never had a chance to have a wife or a family’ like me!”