CAPTAIN HERBERT BEN DREWETT
EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT
30TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 36
BURIED: POELCAPELLE BRITISH CEMETERY, BELGIUM
These words come from The Beloved Captain by Donald Hankey, the gentleman soldier and author who wrote for The Spectator under the pseudonym A Student in Arms. The beloved captain was a real man, Ronald Montague Hardy, under whom Hankey had at one time served. An old Etonian, Hardy was a quiet, thoughtful, caring man whom his men adored:
"There was not one of us but would gladly have died for him. We longed for the chance to show him that. We weren't heroes. We never dreamed about the V.C. But to save the captain we would have earned it ten times over, and never cared a button whether we got it or not. We never got the chance, worse luck."
The captain was killed when a shell landed in the trench on the exact spot where he was trying to dig out some of his men who had been buried by a previous shell. The story concludes:
"But he lives. Somehow he lives. And we who knew him do not forget. We feel his eyes on us. We work for that wonderful smile of his. There are not many of the old lot left now; but I think that those who went West have seen him. When they got to the other side I think they were met ... Anyway, in that faith let me die, if death should come my way; and so, I think, shall I die content."
Captain Ronald Hardy was killed at Hooge on 23 July 1915. The Beloved Captain was published in The Spectator on 15 January 1916. Donald Hankey was killed in action on 12 October 1916.
Captain Herbert Drewett was 33 when he joined the Inns of Court OTC in November 1915, and 34 when he received his commission in the 4th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment in November 1916. According to the battalion war diary, he was killed in action on 31 October 1917 not on the 30th as in the CWGC records, in an attack on Turenne Crossing on the outskirts of Houthulst Forest.
His only brother, Charles, was killed in action on the 29 June 1916 and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.