Father awarded Victoria Cross

Colonel F D M Brown VC

Colonel (at this time, Captain) Francis David Millet Brown won hisVictoria Cross as a very young man at Delhi while suppressing the Indian Mutiny, only a year or two after the award had been instituted by Queen Victoria following the Crimean War.  He was awarded the VC “for great gallantry at NARNOUL, on the 16th November 1857, in having, at the imminent risk of his own life, rushed to the assistance of a wounded soldier, who he carried off under a heavy fire from the enemy, whose Cavalry were within 40 or 50 yards of him at the time”. 

Colonel F.D.M.Brown’s first wife was Jessie Russell, one of six sisters from Melbourne. She died of cholera soon after Claude’s birth. A few years later Colonel Brown married Jessie Doris Childs and had four more sons and a daughter. All his sons went into the army, three dying in action, in three different wars. As well as erecting the lychgate, the second Mrs Brown carved an oak altar in memory of her husband and her son Wyn who was killed in 1915.

She presented the altar to the former Church of England Soldiers’ Institute in North Camp, Aldershot,

Back to 2004 Exhibition main page