Source: Michael Doyle Their Name Liveth For Evermore: The Great War Roll of Honour for Leicestershire and Rutland.
He was the youngest son of the late Robert and Lois Draper of Market Place, High Street, Uppingham, Rutland, husband of Maud Mary Draper, he left two children. Before the declaration of war he was employed as a wine merchants assistant, being with his father before joining up. He was associated with the old volunteers and attended five camps, while subsequently he belonged to the Leicestershire Yeomanry and when servicemen were required for the Midland Railway Viaduct at Harringworth, after the war broke out he volunteered for that duty. He embarked on New Years Day 1916 with the 21st Midland Rifle Brigade to Egypt. He was then transferred to the 2nd/5th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment proceeding to Palestine and was engaged in the fighting at Gaza. He was subsequently transferred to the Wiltshire Regiment. While in Egypt, he studied in a school of musketry and passed in the first class. He contracted sand fly fever, and after recovering upon rejoining his regiment, fell ill with malaria, and had to return to hospital, while later, when at a convalescent camp he was then stricken with dysentery. He was admitted to the 27th General Hospital in Cairo on November 20th 1918, and had several relapses. While being brought to England from Alexandria on board HMNZ Hospital Ship ‘Maheno’ he died. He was buried at sea between Malta and Gibralter about 350 miles east of the latter place. Colonel E. E. Povritt Officer Commanding Troops on the Hospital Ship, and the Reverend H. Watson C.F. forwarded sympathetic letters to the wife and father, the chaplain saying he was much struck with Private Draper’s courage and patience. He found it he said, a strain to talk, but he never complained. A comrade, Lance Corporal W. Haines, who belongs to Nottingham, and who heard of Private Draper’s death in India, from another Uppingham soldier, J. Baddaley, writing to Mr Draper, senior, said:- “Although he had a sailor’s grave, I can honestly say that a better soldier never stood under a pack than he was. I have known him volunteer for many dangerous patrols and have often told him he would be going once too often, but he would simply smile and say, “well so and so won’t go, so I will.” He had several narrow escapes.” The writer of this letter was at one time in the Guards Regiment, and went through the South African War. His mother died whilst he was on active service, and the second of his two children, a son was born after he went abroad, so that he had never seen him..