Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Second Lieutenant W. Candler, Devonshire Regiment, late Royal Fusiliers, who was three times wounded in France and later taken prisoner following the 2nd Devons’ heroic action at Bois des Buttes on 27 May 1918

1914-15 Star (2922 Pte. W. Candler. R. Fus:); British War and Victory Medals (2. Lieut. W. Candler.) good very fine (3) £200-£240

William Candler was born in 1892 in Bampton, Devon. After the outbreak of the Great War he attested for the 24th (Service) Battalion (2nd Sportsman's), Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) and served with them in France from 15 November 1915. He was first hospitalised on 30 July 1916, with shell shock, at the 14th Field Ambulance and then later, on 13 November 1916, he was treated for gun-shot wounds on the 31st Ambulance Train. After recovering he was sent back to England to take an officers training course at Caius College Cambridge receiving his commission into the Devonshire Regiment on 30 January 1918. Having returned to France he was wounded for a third time, this time severely, while reconnoitring no man’s land and there then followed a period of a number of months in hospital and a series of operations. However, undaunted, he returned yet again to the fray and in his own words ‘was privileged to be present at the Battle of Bois Des Buttes.’

Bois des Buttes
Bois des Buttes was a battle honour uniquely awarded to the Devonshire Regiment in memory of the actions of its 2nd Battalion on 27 May 1918, the first day of the Third Battle of the Aisne in the Great War.
The 2nd Devonshires were part of the 8th Infantry Division which had been severely depleted by the Spring fighting of 1918 and had, on 12 May, been attached to General Duchêne’s French Sixth Army and sent to a quiet sector to recuperate and rebuild. On 26 May reports were heard of an impending German attack and the battalion was ordered to occupy positions on Bois des Buttes, a wooded sandstone hill southwest of La Ville-aux-Bois that had been fortified by both the French and the Germans over the previous years. In addition to its surface fortifications, the hill was criss-crossed with creutes- underground quarries whose galleries were dry, impervious to shellfire and, in many cases, electrically lit, and in which the troops took shelter. On the night of 26/27 May the Germans initiated a violent and accurate bombardment followed by a German infantry attack using the recently developed Stormtroop tactic of advancing rapidly, probing for weak spots and avoiding pockets of resistance. The units in the front-line trenches, which had already suffered severely from the artillery bombardment, were rapidly infiltrated and overrun. Soon the 8th Division's only cohesive unit of any size north of the River Aisne was the 2nd Devonshires. At first light, around 0400 hours, the battalion emerged from the dugouts and took up its battle positions. Although much of the trenchwork had been destroyed by the artillery bombardment, as had the field telephones, several determined attacks by units of the German 50th Infantry Division were beaten off.
It soon became apparent to the Germans that Bois des Buttes had become a significant obstacle to their progress, so that it came under attack from both A7V tanks and the Imperial German Army Air Service.
By 0700 hours the forward companies had been all but wiped out and the battalion surrounded. At 0830 the battalion commander, Lt Col Anderson-Morshead, withdrew the remains of his headquarters company and reserve company to the reverse slope of the hill, from where they continued to harass the advancing Germans.
Col Anderson-Morshead divided the 50 survivors of the battalion into two groups and moved them from the hill down to the Juvincourt-Pontavert road to engage the advancing Germans on two flanks.
The Germans were initially thrown into confusion and an artillery team was destroyed, but they soon recovered and attacked in force. More Germans attacked from the hill that the Devonshires had so recently left, and Col Anderson-Morshead was killed. Short of ammunition and greatly outnumbered, the survivors conducted a fighting withdrawal to the Aisne river. Some were captured when they ran out of ammunition, others swam the Aisne and were captured by Germans who had reached the south bank before them.
An eyewitness stated that he saw this regiment, though merely an island in the midst of an innumerable and determined foe, fighting with perfect discipline, and by the steadiness of their fire, mowing down the enemy in large numbers.
In all, 29 officers and 552 other ranks of the 2nd Battalion, the Devonshire Regiment, were killed or captured that morning. Between 40 and 80 survivors managed to cross the Aisne river and canal and rejoin the retreating British forces. However, the battalion significantly delayed the German advance, giving the French and British time to arrange ad hoc defences that brought it to a halt a week later.
The importance that the British Army attached to this action is indicated by the fact that the honour Bois des Buttes was included in the first of a total of ten lists of battle honours for the Great War, published in February, 1924. It is also one of only three honours for the War that was for an engagement not specifically named in the Battles Nomenclature Committee Report of 1921.
In addition, the sacrifice of the Devonshire Regiment was recognised by the award of the French Croix de Guerre with palm on 5 December 1918, the first such award to a British regiment, the riband of which is still worn today by the Battalion’s successor unit, the 1st Rifles.
It was Major B W Ellis, the CO of the 57th Battery XLV Brigade Royal Field Artillery, who provided the evidence, given to 8th Division headquarters, that led to the IX Corps Special Order No. 4 and the granting of the Croix de Guerre:
‘At a late hour in the morning I, with those of my men who had escaped the enemy machine guns and his fearful barrage, joined the CO of the 2nd Devonshire Regiment, and a handful of men holding onto the last trench north of the canal. They were in a position in which they were entirely without hope of help but were fighting on grimly. The Commanding officer himself was calmly writing his notes with a perfect hail of high explosive falling round him. I spoke to him and he told me that nothing could be done. He refused all offers of help from my artillerymen, who were unharmed, and sent them off to get through if they could. His magnificent courage, dauntless bearing and determination to carry on to the end moved one’s emotions.’

Second Lieutenant Candler served in C Company, 2nd Devons at the Battle of Bois des Buttes and was reported missing in the official communication dated 10 June 1918. Little is known of his actions during the battle although a survivor told Candler’s parents that he had been an inspiration to the lads around him by his calmness in walking about in the teeth of intensive German fire, taking ammunition from the pouches of dead comrades to hand to survivors until every bullet was fired at the enemy. He was, in fact, captured during the battle and then took part in the seventy mile march to the point where he was entrained for the prisoner of war camps. Candler went initially to the officer’s camp at Karlsrune where he is alleged to have made two escape attempts. Some reports state that he was further sent to a camp in the Baltic. He was officially reported to be a Prisoner of War on 11 July 1918. Candler was repatriated on Christmas Day 1918, coming ashore in Scotland before taking eight weeks leave at his home town of Bampton, Devon. He returned to army duties and was seconded to the Royal Army Service Corps and spent some months in Egypt and Palestine after which he returned to England and civilian life. He died in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire in 1964, some of his wounds received 41 years earlier never having fully healed.