[4] Butler won the backstroke event in swimming at the 2nd International Stoke Mandeville Games in 1953, and was awarded his medal by the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Patricia Hornsby-Smith.
[4] Charlene Todman, who competed in table tennis in 1951, had been the first Australian to participate in the International Stoke Mandeville Games.
He enlisted in the Australian Army in Manjimup, Western Australia in 1941 and served until the end of the war as a corporal in Syria and Palestine and later in New Guinea and Borneo.
[7] Following his release from hospital in 1950, he drove home to Manjimup in his new Holden car, with specially-designed controls that he could drive with his fingers.
[7] Seeking further rehabilitation, Butler travelled to England to receive treatment by Dr Ludwig Guttmann at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury.