6. What Tom Butler Saw

... being a reflection on the terrible loss of life in the First World War, or indeed in any war, which I thought suitable for an armistice day when armistices seem to be off the agenda.

The years between 2014 and 2018 marked the centenary of the First World War. In my adoptive home town of Mexborough, much as everywhere else in Britain, Europe and indeed the world, people took the opportunity to reflect on what that war had meant to the communities in which they lived, and what lessons were learned during and after that dark time.

The writers of Mexborough were all involved, with events looking at the poetry of the first world war, and a number opportunities to write and perform their own pieces. And it was not just poetry that was celebrated and created. My good friend Bill Lawrence produced the first of his volumes of first world war history focused on Mexborough, “From Pit Town To Battlefields 1914-1916” to which he has since added a second volume “A Year of False Hope - 1917” He is still plugging away to this day, having a third instalment in the pipeline.

I wanted to write a piece about what the war war might have meant to single young soldier, perhaps from the Mexborough area, and the waste of potential caused by snuffing out his life before it had really got started.

Many millions of lives were lost during that war and many millions of those who survived were permanently and grievously wounded, both physically and mentally. The magnitude of the impact that the war had on British life can still be seen in virtually any city, town or village, by looking at the long lists of men who never returned which are to be found the war memorials which sprang up in the years following the conflict. All of these names represent lives which were cruelly cut short, often at the very beginning of adulthood. They represent lives which went un-lived and opportunities lost. They also represent multitudes of devastated families and shattered communities.

The same loss of lives and opportunities and shattering of communities was replicated throughout Europe and the rest of the world, indeed everywhere that the conflict touched.

The vast majority of those who died were not fanatics, nor were their families and communities filled with bloodthirsty warmongers. Their opinions had to some extent been manipulated by the propaganda of warmongers and fanatics inside and outside of the political sphere, but beyond that they were ordinary people, revolted by and afraid of death, who could see the humanity in others, even, given the opportunity, in those that they called their enemies.

The First World War, known at the time as the Great War, was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. Sadly, we now know that it wasn’t. Not even the Second World war achieved that. And today we see conflicts around the word where people die in their hundreds and thousands, many of them civilians who die in their own homes and communities.

Acts of aggression create deep anger and hatred not only for the perpetrators, but for those ordinary people who live alongside them, or in countries governed by them. Those who survive acts of aggression are too easily persuaded that the only response is further aggression, which inevitably causes more deep anger, more hatred, and further acts of aggression.

What can be done to break this vicious circle? I don’t know. But unless we can be persuaded to see the good in ordinary people I don’t think we can even make a start.

What Tom Butler Saw

(i) What Tom Butler Saw 
 
Tom Butler saw good people everywhere. 
He saw good people where others saw only the ordinary 
He saw good old uns  
He saw good young uns 
And good people in between 
He saw that lads his age were good 
He sat by the canal with them and fished for trout  
He laughed and joked with them 
And smoked tobacco and drank pale ale  	
And shared stories  
And talked with wonder and respect 
About the lasses  
In the small Northern town that he called home 
 
Tom Butler saw the posters 
He saw that the Hun would come over here if we let him 
He saw how they would treat English women when they did 
Our mothers 
Our sisters 
The lasses that he used to talk about down the canal 
With wonder and respect 
He saw how they would treat English children 
How they would spear English babies with their bayonets  
And roast them over an open fire for supper by the canal 
Whilst the small Northern town that he called home burned to the ground 
 
Tom Butler saw the good in everyone 
But the Hun had gone too far 
He saw that they had to be stopped  
He saw the chance to be someone 
He saw the chance to find adventure 
He saw the chance to teach the Hun a lesson 
He saw the chance to save our mothers 
Our Sisters 
The lasses that he used to talk about down the canal 
With wonder and respect 
He saw the chance to save the English children 
And the men too old to fight 
He saw the chance to save the small Northern town that he called home 
 
He saw the recruiting sergeant 

And when they day of his departure came  
Tom Butler saw the people he would save  
Standing on the platform  
To wave the train away 
He saw the women waving banners 
He saw the children waving tiny flags 
He saw the gratitude and envy in the eyes of men too old to fight 
He saw the lasses that he used to talk about down the canal 
With wonder and respect 
He saw the colour in their English cheeks 
He saw his mother smiling and waving with them all 
 
And as the engine pulled away 
He saw the tiny houses  
He saw the tiny gardens 
He saw the canal 
He saw the great round pit wheel 
He saw the massive factories 
And he saw the fields around the Northern English town that he called home  
 
And as the engine bore him further and further 
Clanking and clacking its relentless rhythm  
He saw more distant fields 
He saw more distant towns 
The Northern Towns gave way to Southern Towns 
And all the towns contained women waving banners 
And children waving tiny flags 
He saw lasses, wonderful lasses 
And men too old to fight  
With gratitude and envy in their eyes 
As they said goodbye to men like him 

(ii) What Tom Butler Never Saw 
 
Tom Butler didn’t look back 
He never saw his mother’s face crumple as the train pulled away 
He never saw the children cry because the show was over and they were fretful 
He never saw the men too old to fight trailing off to drink pale ale and sadly shake their heads 
As the red English sun went down behind the massive factories 
 
Tom Butler never saw adventure 
Unless marching and mud and misery was adventure 
He never saw the Hun 
He never saw the bullet that entered his skull through his right eye 
He never saw the hole as big as a fist in the back of his head 
He never saw his bloodied brains spill out onto the mud 
 
Tom Butler never saw his mother again 
Or the children 
Or the men, too old to fight, their eyes filled with gratitude and breath smelling of pale ale 
Or the lasses that he used to talk about down the canal, 
With wonder and respect, 
He never saw them grow into women 
 
Tom Butler never saw the armistice 
He never saw another Christmas 
He never saw his twentieth birthday. 
 
He never saw the train return and pull into that station 
In the Northern English Town that he called home 
He never saw the crowds there to greet the weary lads on it 
He never saw the ones who had lost nerve, lost limbs, lost minds. 
He never saw his name carved in stone on the memorial 
 
Tom Butler never saw his wedding day  
He never saw one of the lasses he used to talk about down the canal,  
With wonder and respect,  
Blush and let him place a ring on her finger 
He never saw the children that he never had  
He never saw them enjoy their birthdays, their Christmases 
He never saw their first steps 
Their first days at school 
Their first days at work 
 
He never saw the sons he never had leave to fight Mr Hitler 
He never had to trail off from the station platform to drink pale ale and sadly shake his head with the other men too old to fight 
 
He never saw the daughters he never had 
Get married to other people’s unborn sons 
He never saw his grandchildren, 
The children of the children that he never had 
The grandchildren who would have grown up to take aeroplane flights 
To take holidays in sunny overseas lands, 
Booked on their smartphones 
After seeing advertisements on flat screen television sets. 
Tom Butler never saw a television set.  
He never saw George Formby 
Jimmy Clitheroe 
Norman Wisdom 
Ken Dodd 
Morecambe and Wise 
Steptoe and Son 
Or Fawlty Towers
He never got the chance to turn it off and have a bit of peace 
 
He never saw an LP record 
Or a cassette tape 
Or a CD 
He never drove a car 
He never spent a few days in a caravan near the sea 
He never saw Doncaster Rovers win the third division North 
He never saw Bobby More lift the Jules Rimet trophy 
He never saw Geoff Hurst and Ray Wilson lift Bobby Moore as he lifted the Jules Rimet Trophy 
All smiles, like the lads down the canal 
 
Tom Butler never saw the Beatles  
Never wondered why on earth they would let their hair grow like that 
He never felt himself losing touch with the “kids of today”,  
He never felt himself become irrelevant 
Never saw the lasses he used to talk about down the canal  
With wonder and respect  
Grow old 
Never saw a wife grow old with him 
Never saw his tearful family around his deathbed in a NHS hospital 
He never saw the NHS 
 
He never saw any of that 
 
But if we look, we can see him 
And others like him 
Ghosts and their descendants, 
Living men and women 
Lads, Lasses 
Children 
People just like them 
People just like you and me 
You and me  
Us 
 
Look around you  
Look through Tom Butlers’ eyes 
See good people where others see ordinary 
Treat them with wonder and respect 
 
Do it every day 
Do it every hour of every day 
Do it in Tom Butler’s name if it helps 

But do it.