Drago Marter was born in 1960 in Španovica, a village near to Pakrac that after the Second World War had its name changed to Novo Selo. After Croatian independence, in 1993, Croatian authorities reinstated the old name of Španovica. He comes from a Volksdeutsche family. His paternal grandfather was captured in the Second World War whilst serving as a German soldier, and was brought from Banat to the area of western Slavonia where the family continued to live. By vocation, Drago Marter is a medical technician. At the beginning of the war in the 1990s he was working at the hospital in Pakrac. He witnessed the pre-war situation as well as the fighting that followed in Pakrac and the surrounding area. He participated in the war as a member of the military ambulance service. He took part in the evacuation of the patients from the Pakrac hospital. He also participated in Operations Flash and Storm. Today he is involved with rural tourism in Španovica.