Hon. Secretary of the Tynemouth Branch and Hon. Superintendent of the Tynemouth Motor Life-boat.

By LIEUT-GENERAL SIR HENRY MERRICK LAWSON, K.C.B.

[A short account of Major Burton's career and,, in particular, of his distin- guished services to the Life-boat Service, appeared in " The Lifeboat " for March, 1923. The following account of his services in the Royal Engineers, espe- cially during the War, is reprinted from the " R.E. Journal" far February, 1925, by permission of the Editor. Major Burton, it u-ttl be remembered, holds both the Gold and Silver Medals of the Institu- tion for gallantry in saving life from ship- wreck, and last year, with the other Gold Medallists, was decorated by the King with the Medal of the Order of the British Empire.] WHEN I read in the Monthly Supplement for August, 1924, the note about the unique and splendid life-saving services of Major H. E. Burton, O.B.E., R.E., I thought that it would interest his brother officers to know something of the great work performed by Burton during the late war. The following lines are an effort to tell the tale.

The most abiding impression I retain of my days as a young officer at Chatham is of the supreme excellence of the Instructional N.C.O. Staff of the S.M.E.

They seemed to me a race of super-men; they knew everything, and could explain everything, were intelligent to a degree, inspired great respect and had the-best of manners.

This first impression of the value of material to be found in the ranks of the Corps has never weakened, and I have met some astonishing proofs of its truth ; but it was reserved for the closing years of my service to find the strongest illustration of all in the ease of Burton and his work during the Great War.

B nton himself came from Royal Engineer stock. His father joined the Corps in 1858, served in it until 1879, and when a Quartermaster-Sergeant Field Works Instructor, at Chatham, and therefore one of the supermen I so much admired, sent his son in August, 1878, as a boy of fourteen, into the Corps, where he received his early train- ing in the Electrical School and in the Submarine Mining Service. Burton was therefore, in a very real sense, a child of the Corps. He did well from the first, and his early exploits in the athletic world as a football player, a great oar and a skilled sailor were combined with rare professional talent. He rose rapidly through the various ranks, assisted Cardew in much of his electrical research work, and was for eleven years an Instructor in the Electrical School, from 1889 to 1SOO, when he went to the South African war as a Warrant Officer. Here he was variously employed on railway work, telegraph construction and electric lighting, with the result that in June, 1902, he was awarded a commission for general work in the field.

Burton joined the 16th Coast Batta- lion Company R.E., as a subaltern at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and all his com- missioned service to the outbreak of the recent war was spent in that great city of the North, where his name has now become almost a household word.

He got command of the Company in 1905, was promoted Captain in 1911, and when war broke out was in charge of the electric light and telephone arrangements for the Tyne defences as well as Adjutant of the Tyne Electrical Engineers, the great success of whose work during the war was largely due to Burton's organizing and instructional powers.

Officers who went abroad in the early days of the war hardly realize the work at home involved in the raising and training of the huge numbers which the expansion of the Army involved. The material was splendid, but the officers, N.C.O.'s and men started with no mili- tary knowledge, and the task of teaching the officers and N.C.O.'s their duties, and of teaching them how to teach their men seemed at the outset to all, except Lord Kitchener, an almost impossible one. That the problem was solved was due to the way in which men such as Burton rose to a great occasion.

In January, 1915, the Commander ofthe Tyne defences, realizing Burton's knowledge and powers, put him to the task of instructing the newly-joined officers in field engineering, in the making of improvised bombs, and in the laying and maintenance of telephone circuits.

In was in March, 1915, that a brilliant member of my Staff, with a hawk's eye for talent, discovered Burton for the Headquarters of the Northern Com- mand. We withdrew him and his establishment from the Tyne, moved them to Tynemouth, and founded there a Command School of Signalling, with Burton as Commandant and Chief Instructor. One hundred officers and 100 N.C.O.'s joined for the first class in April, 1915.Instruction in field engineering and bombing was added, and when I first visited the School in July, 1915, I was at once impressed by Burton as an instructor, organizer and disciplinarian, The school developed rapidly, the need for yet further expansion, was evident, and therefore arrangements made to transfer the enlarged were school to where it would have room to function and expand. A suitable site was found in the Park at Farnleigh, near Ottley, where hutting for 250 officers and 500 N.C.O.s was constructed by low-category sappers unfit for service abroad.

The School commenced work ia its new and final home in November, 1915, and was known as the Northern Com- mand Field Engineering, Bombing and Anti-Gas School. It continued a vigor- and useful existence for the next estabous three years until the conclusion of hostilities. The average daily numbers attending the School were 250 officers and 500 N.C.0.8 under instruction from over 100 different units, and the Courses varied from two to five weeks, according to the subject. The total number that passed through the School was upward of 10,000 officers and nearly 18,000 N.C.O.s.

One hundred and twenty sappers, unfit for service abroad, were employed in maintaining the buildings, training areas and trenches, including the erection of a skeleton Belgian village and a mobile dummy tank.

One hundred and fifty infantry details were allotted for Camp duties and as officers' servants, whilst a staff of forty W.A.A.C.s ran the Officers' Mess.

There was a staff of thirty officers under Burton as instructors and for administrative duties and about the same number of N.C.O. instructors.

The responsibility for this large establishment, the numbers of which at one time amounted to 1,150, devolved entirely on Burton. In addition to arranging the syllabi, writing many of the Training Manuals and doing a great deal of personal instruction, he supervised the Electric Lighting and Engineer Services, and had on his shoulders the whole burden of the administration aswell as the discipline of detachments of officers and men drawn from a large number of units, The ease with which the whole machine worked, the excellence of the instruction and of its results, the willing work done and the absence of disciplinary troubles were convincing proofs of Burton's powers and of his capacity for the job.

The School became a fount of knowledge in the subjects with which it dealt: classes for battalion commanders were held periodically, generals came there to learn the latest methods, and on one occasion twenty-six of them and twentyfour staff officers assembled for short lectures on training and to witness the practical applications in various subjects, The fame of the institution spread beyond the limits of the Command, and inspectors and staff officers from London testified to the excellence of the instruction and carried the methods to estabous ments in other parts of the Kingdom.

One of ray last duties as G.O.C.-in-C.

was to take the then Commander of the Forces, Lord French, to see the School which impressed him immensely, and I well remember the Corps' pride I had in telling him about the Commandant, and pointing to Burton as a convincing proof of what the ranks of our Corps were able to produce.

For his services during the war Burton was three times honourably mentioned in the London Gazette, was promoted to the rank of Brevet Major in June, 1917, and was awarded the O.B.E. in 1918.

I have before me, as I write, a photograph of the School, taken just before the Armistice. A glance at it, with its 680 faces of officers, N.C.O.s, men and W.A.A.C.s, tells in a moment the magnitude of Burton's charge.

And when I look at the books of instruction prepared and issued on Signalling, Bombing and Anti-Gas Measures, when I study the Standing Orders and the various Syllabi and think of the innumerable side-shows involved in the administration, I take off my hat to this brother officer of ours who evinced such remarkable powers and did such splendid work throughout the war..