Nigel Drever passes
The UK’s Sun reports the sad news that Nigel Drever, one of the remaining 15 pilots who fought the Battle of Britain in the skies over the United Kingdom in 1940 has passed at the tender age of 96 – he was commisioned as a pilot when he was 19 years old. He was shot down in 1941 over France and imprisoned in the famed Stalag Luft III, featured in the movie “The Great Escape”;
Although Mr Drever was not one of the escapees, he did help to dig the tunnels.
On one occasion he had to be pulled out by his boots after the earth collapsed around him.
[…]
After the war Mr Drever worked as a coffee estate manager in Tanzania before managing a nightclub in Andorra and becoming a property developer in Malta and Essex.
His daughter Clair Drever, 67, of Reading, said: “He lived in Africa, then he went to Malta and then on to Andorra where he owned the Whisky Club.
Category: Historical
Blue skies and fair winds.
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth. . . ”
Damn, it got dusty here all of a sudden. Damned allergies.
Amen…
“…the essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one…”
Poor Kraut bastards-never stood a chance.
Missed the Luft Stalag III reference before, so here’s another movie quote in honor of that:
“Colonel Von Luger, it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.”
Personally, I prefer Stalag 17 to The Great Escape-as a movie-but man, what a gang of total bad-asses those guys were in real life.
Compare that with the pussies this country has produced that want to vote for the evil communist bitch of the east!
How in the Wide Wide World of Sports did this story get posted here so quickly? It came out today at 8:45 GMT. International ninjas?
One of the few to whom so many owed so much. Sounds like he led a full life, doing what he wanted after the war. Rest in Peace.
I found it while I was looking for feel good stories.
I see. You had to leave the country to find one! Nevertheless, that story is so new, there were no cmts. I’m guessing there will be in the morning. If not, England, too, is lost.
Catch the wind, Nigel Drever. Straight on ’til morning.
Every time I come on this site and try to post, I get a popup “under” my page that starts blasting a bunch of bullshyt ads….? Why is that?
Get adblock, it’s free and works great.
He should be buried in a Spitfire. Let that homesick angel carry him straight to the Pearly Gates.
Damn…I just got finished cleaning my townhouse and it’s already getting dusty.
Rest in peace, Mr Drever, and God save the Queen.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Thank you for your service and may you rest in peace, Nigel Driver
Came to post this, glad to see it’s already up.
Twice.
I figured there were bound to be more comments in the Sun today after the Brits got up and read the paper. I was wrong. It’s afternoon in London and there is one lone comment. So, I thought, maybe another paper ran this story and comments are there. The Daily Mail did. Again, there is a solitary comment. In both papers, there are numerous comments about sports figures, soap-opera actors, and numerous other people and topics that merit attention, but only two in two newspapers regarding a fellow w/o whom there would be one paper for both Germany and its satellite island, England. Sad.
Then God save the Queen, because the English of today won’t.
If there is anything that shows that words and ideas have consequences, it is the difference between the men of the 1940’s, and their age-group counterparts of the 2010’s.
Have read several books on Stalag Luft III… one of the reasons that site was selected was because of the sandy soil which made tunnels prone to collapse. The wet underground soil also smelled different and looked much different than the topsoil… it really was a remarkable feat to dig not just one, but three tunnels. Here’s a historical note – according to “The Longest Tunnel”, the third tunnel was never discovered by the Germans and they were surprised when it was uncovered post-war.
“Per Ardua Ad Astra.”
Rest easy in Valhalla, Nigel Drever.
You’ve earned it.
I gotta say something here.
The young kids of today are the kids fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Africa, Iraq and all over the rest of the world as we old farts sit here and complain about today’s youth.
The pussies you see on TV and all over the internet are the noisy ones and just because they are noisy does not mean that all of the kids are like them.
I go to the Michael Debakey VA Hospital here in Houston and see all of the aftermath of the current Global War on Terror and I never, ever cease to be impressed with those young men and women.
I meet a lot of those young people in my travels and surprisingly very few of them are headed to the Ramen Bars or Pillotes dance classes.
Most of them are good kids, it’s the idiots that are the noisiest…