Walter Leslie Brown (Chaplain)

Honorary Captain (The Reverend) Walter Leslie Brown (13 August 1910 – 6 June 1944), served in the Canadian Chaplain Service and was attached to the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade during Operation Overlord. He was murdered by Waffen-SS soldiers having surrendered and dressed as an army chaplain at the time of capture.

History
Walter Brown was born in Peterborough, Ontario on 13 August 1910, to English-born parents George Carmichael Brown and Florence May Brown (née Peters), although the family later settled in Orillia, Ontario. He had two brothers.

Reverend Brown (an alumnus of Huron University College) was already an ordained and practising minister, before he volunteered for service in the Canadian Army as part of the Canadian Chaplain Service on 1 April 1941 in Toronto, Ontario. He was eventually attached to an armoured regiment (the 27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment)) slated to land early on D-Day and he was therefore one of the first Canadian Military Chaplains to land in Normandy on Juno Beach on 6 June 1944. Walter Brown was murdered (by bayonetting), after surrendering to members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend on 6 June. He was the only allied military chaplain to suffer this fate, although several were killed and wounded in action in World War II. The Hitlerjugend Waffen SS were notoriously brutal and murdered several Canadian Prisoners of War in the early stages of the Normandy Campaign (see Ardenne Abbey massacre).

His body was eventually recovered on 11 July 1944 and he was buried along with other Canadian servicemen in the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery in Normandy, France. Walter Brown was awarded the following medals posthumously: the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal, the War Medal, the Defence Medal and the France and Germany Star. The medals were passed to his parents.