A Last Keepsake: 82 Years Later, Welsh Soldier’s Story Comes Home

After an incredible journey and a period of 82 years, a cigarette case belonging to a Second World War soldier who was killed in action has been returned to his family.

Cigarette Case Found

In a very emotional meeting at the Royal Welsh Museum in Brecon, Dutch metal detectorist, Filip Krapels, who discovered the case in a field in Bergeijk, in the Netherlands, presented his find to the only child of Private Stanley Drew, who was killed in France in 1944.

Pte Stanley Drew served with the 5th Battalion, Welch Regiment and landed in Normandy towards the end of June 1944. Tragically, the 31-year-old was killed in the fierce fighting around Hill 112 barely a month later: although as no body was found he was listed as missing until April 1945.

Diane Owen, who was born 11 days after her father died, was thrilled to see his cigarette case and deeply touched by the efforts that Filip Kraples had gone to to find a member of Stanley’s family.

Who was Stanley Drew?

Private Drew was born on 27th November, 1912, in Penarth near Cardiff. He was the seventh of 12 children to Samuel and Francis Drew and grew up helping in the family’s general store.

He was also a successful amateur boxer and a member of the Penarth boxing club that his older brother Bert had established to help veterans of the First World War cope with shell shock. And it was the club that had given Stanley the cigarette case in the first place.

Stanley enlisted at Monmouth on 24th June 1940.

Just after D-Day in 1944, the 5th Battalion, Welch Regiment arrived in France and immediately saw action in the Normandy Campaign. On the 21st July it was holding a position at Baron when the enemy launched three infantry assaults supported by Tiger tanks. The first two were beaten off but the third, supported by six Tigers, overran the 5th Battalion, which later reported 118 soldiers missing. Private Stanley Drew was one of them.

Filip Krapels, who found the cigarette case said: “This is an incredible story! How did something belonging to a soldier who was killed in Normandy end up buried in a field nearly 400 miles away in the Netherlands?

“Since finding the case I have wondered this and I know the Welsh regiments liberated our regional capital Den Bosch so I imagine a comrade picked it up and took it with the intention of returning it to the man’s family. For Stanley’s sake, and for the man who believed it was important enough to take with him, I felt I must return it to its rightful home. This has been my mission and it is so wonderful to be here to hand it over in person to Stanley’s daughter.”

Stanley is commemorated on the the Bayeux Memorial.

Diane presented the case to the museum so that it can be displayed along with its remarkable story. The cigarette case is now on display at the Royal Welsh Museum, Brecon.