carry his own pack as a volunteer soldier, as he was from the educated classes. The volunteers assembled at the London Communist Party HQ before arriving in Paris and sending his mother a postcard "don't worry'. The group entered Spain secretly on foot through the Pyrenees and were greeted at Figueras by some hungry Republican soldiers and local people before travelling on by train to Tarazona for basic training. In the battalion Drever was attached to first, the political attache was a Bob Cooney from Aberdeen. His first shock was the destruction of towns they marched through together such as Belchite, where he was posted with Jimmy Rutherford, a fellow Edinburgh volunteer from Newhaven whom he had known for couple of years through the Labour League of Youth and Communist Party at home and was a Spanish speaker. Their group got cut off for three days from the rest during a group tank attack and in the confusion came across the enemy and were taken prisoner with John Goldstein, another Spanish speaker from the battalion. Prisoner of war and return The prisoners had really expected to be executed at once, but were taken by train to a prison camp at Valladolid, with only tinned fish, bread and figs to eat en route, at stopping points local women gave them water. That camp included Spanish deserters and international prisoners including Germans and Poles. The experience was grim with little food, poor sanitation and lice infestation. They were then moved to a larger camp at Burgos where the German Gestapo were selecting prisoners such as Jews and non Europeans, who were taken and never returned. His comrade Jimmy Rutherford, who had been in Spain before, despite being only 21 also expected to be chosen (as he had disobeyed an interdict on returning to Spain), and was indeed selected and executed. Jimmy's loss was mourned by his fisher community in Newhaven, and he was described as 'one of Scotland's National Heroes, who gave his life for an ideal'. Drever wrote in code to inform their Communist Party comrades in Edinburgh of his loss. At his next prisoner camp in Palencia, Drever met other Scots like Donald McGregor, who was also dead by the time Drever was interviewed in 1986. On return after 9 months imprisoned, with his family having been wrongly informed that he was killed in action, and memorials in Leith and