08-05-2025
Child hero of WW2 who swept mines at 14 lays bare horrors for first time
On the eve of VE Day, Ronald Butcher, 98, has opened up about his astonishing childhood at sea for the first time because "We must learn from the past and be peacemakers"
A decorated veteran who was a child hero has spoken out for the first time in 80 years about the true horrors he saw in the Second World War.
On the eve of VE Day, Ronald Butcher, 98, has opened up about his astonishing childhood at sea during the war because: 'We must learn from the past and be peacemakers.'. He was only a 14-year-old boy when he was working on a minesweeper climbing on 'pin mines' to diffuse them and aged 15 in the Merchant Navy when his boat was sunk by a torpedo on his very first mission.
He told The Mirror: '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, Croist. They were getting the injured out first.'
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He was eventually rescued by the RNLI but doesn't know what happened to his crewmates off the disaster just off he English Channel. He was sent to his local hospital in Thetford to recover.
Still a child on D-Day in 1944, Ron then found himself off the coast of Normandy, when his new ship was hit by mines, five miles off Juno beach. Ronald was awarded the Legion d'honneur by the French for his service.
His daughter Christine Lincoln, 61, said: 'He still wakes up in the night dreaming about swimming.'
His new ship, the Francis C Harrington, was hit by two mines, as they tried to deliver vital supplies and more than 500 troops. Five of his crew were killed.
Christine explains: 'The ship was patched up and they were a massive sitting duck for six days before they were towed back to England.
While they waited 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.
'Honestly, that's where I'm bloody sure I'd come deaf then, I couldn't hear nothin' or see anything. 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. Juno, our beach, was being fired on. The guns kept going. But the Americans got it worse; they died in their thousands.'
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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.
'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.
'I always thought three guns would fire seconds apart but they fired at the same time just a split second behind each other. '
Explaining how they carried on despite the damage to their ship, he said: 'There was a mat that was rolled down over the holes in the side of the ship. It would roll down and go down the holes and sea pressure would push the coconut matting tight to the steel.'
The stunned teenager then had to take part in the gruesome task of clearing the bodies from the water below them.
'The parsons corp were captains with a collar, and they were covered in blood. The bodies were floating and sinking. They were in punts, pulling the dead onto the landing craft, pulling bits of legs on.
'We had to give a bit of a hand for the last two hours. We went up the coast and were told not to say where we took them off to.
'It was an old derelict chapel…they cleared it out, made it look a bit decent and the back garden was about three or four acres which the Government took over.'
He said they dug out a 20ft grave, explaining how the pit was as high as the ceiling in the hotel we were speaking in, during a trip to the Netherlands with the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans.
'There were three weekly boats from Juno at that time, one behind the other. Terrible. We ended up in a bloody pub. The Parsons were in there too, we covered ourselves in beer.'
His daughter, former nurse Christine, 61, said opening up during this week's trip head of VE Day has transformed her dad
'This trip he has been given respect, love and he's come alive.
'At home he would sit quietly in his chair and I would ask him 'Are you all right dad?' and he'd say; 'I'm just thinking'. But he'd never tell me what about. I could see he was sad though.
'Sometimes in the morning he would say he'd had a terrible night, but I thought that was physical now I think it might have been the nightmares.
'But people have been really listening to him and he's been able to talk to people who have been through the same thing as him. To me when he arrived on this trip he was a tightly closed bud and now he's blossomed."
During our chat Ron admits to his daughter he had 'a little one' - a nightmare - recently, about climbing on a mine aged 14 to diffuse it with a 'giant spanner'. He tells his shocked daughter he had been ordered to do this on his Uncle Bill's minesweeper in Lowestoft and it was not just a dream. His uncle and cousin were later 'blown to bits'.
He also opened up to the Mirror by the end of the trip, saying: 'When I left the war I had a job to sleep. I was fighting the bloody enemy, swimming, where I don't know. I used to dream and shout 'help'. My mother and father used to come and wake me up and sort me out. That gradually went. '
But when his daughter gently asks if he ever has them now, he says: 'Sometimes! I did have a little nightmare a while ago. I was ordered to go on these pin mines and climb up with a bloody great spanner with grips on and take the horns off. '
Asked if that's what he had to do during the war and he told her 'yes!' explaining: 'They put a rope around my middle and lowered me down because I was the lightest. I was 14. I left school at 13 and I was a mine sweeper with Uncle Bill,' he told her.
Ron went on to explain how he joined the Merchant Navy rather than go down the coal mines as a Bevan Boy after lying about his age and they turned a blind eye. 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.
'It was dangerous in the Atlantic. It took 15 days one way to go to Canada. It's a long way from northern Scotland down the coast of England then across the Atlantic, that's 15,000 miles. '
Ron later joined the British Army for more than 30 years as a civilian officer where he met members of the royal family regularly working his way up to become an officer.
With his wonderful booming laugh he tells us he met 'all the royals' but the Queen was his favourite. 'The Queen was wonderful. When she spoke at first she was like a Hoorah Henry in front of the public, but when she was on her own with us in the offices, she was one of the boys. She had two voices,' he chuckled.
On VE Day the great great grandad will be lighting the beacon near his home and urges: 'Keep telling your children. Get it in their little heads what happened.'
Ron added: "We must learn from the past, be peacemakers and work together to make the world a better place.
"We must never forget how futile war is and that every person killed is somebody's child. No matter where they are from, their families will never recover from it or be the same again."
