Butters, Private Lawrence Sylvester

Service highlights

  • Service number: A37847
  • Born 19 January 1918 near St. Marys
  • Rank: Private
  • Enlisted 30 October 1940 with the Highland Light Infantry of Canada
  • Served overseas with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division
  • Landed in Normandy after D Day and served in the push inland
  • Died: 22 June 1944
  • Buried at Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery
  • Remembered on the Second World War plaque at St. Marys Town Hall

A Life and Service Remembered

Lawrence Sylvester Butters was born near St. Marys on 19 January 1918 and was raised in Blanshard Township near Motherwell. He worked as a farmer and later as a cheesemaker at a local factory in Kintore. It is easy to picture the rhythm of his early life, practical work, early mornings, and the kind of steady reliability that small communities quietly depend on.

He enlisted at Stratford on 30 October 1940. After months of training and movement between camps in Canada, his battalion sailed from Halifax in the summer of 1941 and arrived in Scotland. For the next three years, he trained in Britain, preparing for the day when training would become real combat.

That moment came in June 1944. The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on Juno Beach and began the hard work of pushing inland against determined resistance. Lawrence’s unit held defensive positions while the bridgehead was built up, living under the constant strain of artillery and the uncertainty that came with every night and every move forward.

In the early hours of 22 June 1944, Lawrence was in defensive positions near Villons-les-Buissons when German artillery opened up. At about 3 a.m., a shell from a heavy gun struck him in the left leg. His comrades carried him back by stretcher to the 22 Canadian Field Ambulance, but he was pronounced dead on arrival. He was 26.

A small newspaper piece from home captured what his family was living through at the same time. It reported that his brother Charles, serving in the same regiment, was in hospital in England with an injured hand from wounds received in action, and that their father had been informed. Another brother, Raymond, was in training. For one family, the war did not arrive as a single blow. It arrived as overlapping fears, telegrams, and long stretches of waiting.

Lawrence was buried in Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery in Normandy. His headstone carries a short epitaph submitted by his father, “He died that we might live.” He was survived by his father John of Kirkton, two sisters, and two brothers who also enlisted. His mother, Louise Bolton, had died when he was a child. Today, his name remains part of St. Marys’ public memory on the town hall plaque, a reminder of a working life interrupted and a family that carried the cost home.

Major battles and operations

  • Normandy, June 1944, service in the advance inland after D Day
  • Defensive fighting and artillery fire in the Villons-les-Buissons area, leading to his fatal wounding on 22 June 1944

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