We hailed a taxi for the half hour trip to the cemetery which was beautifully kept. We wandered along the rows of gravestones all standing at attention as if awaiting parade inspection. And, finally, there it was. Private S. Butler. I placed the rose on my uncle’s grave and tears splashed down from somewhere. Sidney Butler. Oldest son and pride of the Butler family of Kameruka. He had been lying there for almost a century and I was the first of his family to visit; about 100 years too late. 

I would not have been surprised if the heavens had opened and wept in sympathy, for all the young men – mostly from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds – who died in futile wars, with no idea why they were dying. 

Sid, and his brother Ennisford (called Mick) were the oldest boys in the Butler family, which share-farmed for the Lucas-Tooth family at Kameruka. It was the old British method of farming, implanted onto Australian soil. 

The family was not harsh; in fact, Sir Robert Lucas-Tooth treated his serfs-tenants well.  But, like most aristocrats, he and his family were very conscious of their superior social status. At the dances regularly held in the Kameruka Hall, a white line was drawn with chalk down the centre of the dance floor. The ‘peasants’ were not permitted to cross this line and dance (or even converse) with their ‘betters’.

However, Sid was a ladies’ man with more confidence than a young man of his background was entitled to have. To the glee of the share farmers, he regularly crossed the line to dance with young ladies of ‘quality’. The females never complained; breaching convention probably gave them a delicious thrill. 

At the outbreak of WW1 the brothers joined up, ostensibly to fight for the “mother country”. It would be a break from the endless grind of farming and it would impress the local young women. Adept at shooting rabbits on the farm, their superior marksmanship was recognised and, during training, they became instructors at the rifle range.

Then they were plunged into the unimaginable horror of trench warfare. Pompous generals in safe concrete reinforced bunkers blithely ordered the troops, innocent young men, to sacrifice themselves to the grisly God of War. 

At one stage the Butler siblings were forced to take shelter in a bomb crater. Unknown to them something hideously evil, a gas heavier than air, skulked at the bottom of the hole: mustard gas. Shortly after, Sid became ill, coughing blood. He was taken across the Channel to Tidworth Army Hospital.

My mother, Sid’s young sister, received cheery letters from Mick in the trenches and Sid in hospital. There was no mention of trenches or gas. They frequently enquired about their girlfriends, asking my teenage mother if they were “missed” by the local young ladies. Sid’s health improved. He was a hit with the nurses, this brash young Australian.

There was a dance in Salisbury. The nurses, Angels of Mercy, encouraged him to go with them, wrapping him up in a greatcoat against the cold. Sadly, he contracted an infection, which quickly worsened into pneumonia. He died in a couple of days and was buried in the Tidworth Army cemetery.

Sid’s brother, Mick made it back home, but, after a few months, succumbed to the effects of his mustard gas-ruptured lungs. He is buried at Candelo. Sir Robert Lucas-Tooth’s three sons were also casualties of the so-called Great War.