Basil Whitfield Drew (1920-1945)
Basil Whitfield Drew (1920-1945)
Second World War Roll of Honour
Basil Whitfield Drew was born in Welshpool on 1 October 1920, the only son of the Reverend Alfred Edward Drew, Vicar of Baslow, and Margaret Nichols (née Whitefield) Drew of The Vicarage, Baslow in Derbyshire, later of Llanrhos, Deganwy in Caernarvonshire. He was educated at Malvern College, where he was in School House from 1934 to 1939. He served as a Lance Corporal in the Officer Training Corps and won the Ledbury Cup in 1938 and 1939. He matriculated at Downing College in 1939 to read History and spent a year in College before volunteering for military service. He attended an Officer Cadet Training Unit before being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Sherwood Foresters (Nottingham and Derbyshire Regiment) on 15 March 1941. He was wounded at the battle of El Alamein, after which he returned to England where he became an instructor. He was then posted to the 12th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment in the 6th Airborne Division, where he served as a platoon Commander in A Company. He saw action with them in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and at the crossing of the Rhine in Operation Varsity on 24 March 1945, where the battalion landed at Landing Zone R to the south-west of the village of Hamminkeln. Once D Company had secured the exits from the village, A and B Companies attacked it in a battle with enemy infantry and armoured vehicles which lasted thirty minutes. The battalion suffered casualties of 116 men killed and 41 wounded over two days in the capture of the high ground overlooking Brunen.
By the evening of 1 April 1945, the battalion was at Huttrup when it marched out at 6.30pm to a blown-up bridge across the Dortmund-Ems Canal at Ladbergen. At 4am the next morning, they began advancing through woods and across the countryside towards the town of Lengerich, some 10 kilometres away. The 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry were tasked with sealing the town off from the south while the 12th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment was to seal it off from the north and the 1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles was ordered to move directly down the main road into the town. By 8.30am the 12th Battalion had arrived on the northern outskirts of the town. During their advance towards the northeast of the town they came under continual sniper fire. That afternoon a strong enemy position was discovered in some woods on top of the ridge, some 700 yards from A Company, which surrounded the northern side of the town. Two unsuccessful attempts were made to take this position during which Lieutenant Basil Drew and another officer were killed.
Lieutenant Drew was killed in action on 2 April 1945, aged 24. He is buried at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery and also commemorated on the war memorials at Malvern College and at Baslow.
Source
TNA - 12th Devonshire Regiment war diaries WO 171/5172 (including photograph from press cutting)
