Obituary for Major Bill Brown

Major Bill Brown, who has died aged 88, was born on 6 October 1930 in Kingston, Surrey, and had two younger brothers, Peter and Anthony. He was educated at Stowe School and went to Sandhurst, where he proved to be a very good athlete and cross-country runner, before being commissioned into The Royal Leicestershire Regiment in August 1951. He joined the 1st Battalion in Hong Kong before moving to Korea, where the horrors of battle made a lasting impression on him.

In 1953, he was seconded to 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment for three years in the UK and Cyprus. This included the Suez invasion, when he was 2IC of D Company. He had always continued his athletics and cross-country running and in 1954 he watched the breaking of the four-minute mile in Oxford. Two weeks later he ran against Roger Bannister, Chris Chattaway and Chris Brasher, coming in 4th in four minutes and 16 seconds.

In 1957 he rejoined 1 R LEICESTERS as 2IC D Company in Famagusta, where his brother Anthony had already joined. In 1958 he took command of B Company in Plymouth and later Muenster. In 1961 he was posted to Barbados as Adjutant The Barbados Regiment and ADC to the Governor before its independence. He was also Head of Security for the region. His family have found several photos of him with Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister at that time, as a number of secret talks took place in Barbados regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was in Barbados that he met Judy and they married shortly afterwards.

He rejoined the 1st Battalion in Hong Kong in 1963 and then commanded A Company in Borneo for three months. On return to the UK, he was appointed Training Major in Watchet and then, after the Battalion’s retitling as 4 R ANGLIAN, he commanded HQ Company during the Aden tour in 1965. He then left his Regiment again, this time on secondment to The Malay Regiment to train them in jungle warfare.

After retirement from the Army in 1968, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Engineering Employers’ Federation, and later Area Secretary, so he moved his family to Bromsgrove and then Malvern. His work involved handling industrial disputes and tribunals, and his superb negotiating abilities made him equally popular with unions and employers, and they all trusted his word. The most meaningful negotiations apparently happened in the pub discussing the woes of his team Aston Villa. He also served with the Warwickshire ACF and the Herefordshire & Worcestershire ACF from 1969-1976.

On full retirement in 1996, he and his wife spent the next two decades travelling to some of the remotest areas of the world, always looking for the most inaccessible countries to visit, including Burma, Bhutan and Patagonia, or searching for tigers in Nepal. They also began a passion for rescue whippets and both loved to walk them every day for miles, particularly in the Malvern Hills.

Bill’s brother Anthony was killed in action in 1961 while seconded to the Ghanaian Army, which deployed elements to The Congo as part of a United Nations Force. Bill and his brother Peter, together with Anthony’s widow, their daughter and other members of their family, attended the moving service in Leicester Cathedral during Royal Tigers’ Weekend 2018 when a memorial plaque was unveiled to Anthony in the Regimental Chapel.

Bill appeared to others as a modest old school gentleman, with a great sense of humour and a splendid ability to tell stories. He was deeply religious, absolutely trustworthy, very thoughtful and kind, with a gift for making people laugh and feel at ease. One friend summed him up well as “a thoroughly grand chap”.