Lovell Quentin Drage was born at Hatfield, Hertfordshire to Robert Lovell Drage and his wife Kathleen Mary Quentin. He had two older sisters. Drages had lived in Hatfield since at least the 1850s; most of them were doctors.
In June 1933, Lovell arrived at Southampton from Cape Town with his mother and his sister Diana Margaret. The manifest states that their last permanent residence was in Southern Rhodesia. Presumably, he was being brought back to England to go to school.
He was educated at Wellington College and matriculated in 1938. At the outbreak of war, he left Christ Church and joined the Royal Horse Artillery.
He served throughout the North African Campaign. The award of the Military Cross was gazetted on 23 September 1943.
He was serving as a Captain with "A" Bty., 11 (Honourable Artillery Coy.) Regiment at the time of his death, and was killed with all his tank crew, on 20 September 1944. He had not long since returned to the Battery after a spell as Adjutant at RHQ.
He is buried in the Coriano Ridge War Cemetery Plot VIII, E, 12
He is commemorated on the Roll of Honour in the Royal Military Chapel, Sandhurst.
Coriano Ridge was the last important ridge in the way of the Allied advance in the Adriatic sector in the autumn of 1944. Its capture was the key to Rimini and eventually to the River Po. German parachute and panzer troops, aided by bad weather, resisted all attacks on their positions between 4 and 12 September 1944. On the night of 12 September the Eighth Army reopened its attack on the Ridge, with the 1st British and 5th Canadian Armoured Divisions. This attack was successful in taking the Ridge, but marked the beginning of a week of the heaviest fighting experienced since Cassino in May, with daily losses for the Eighth Army of some 150 killed.
Acknowledgement to CWGC