Walter Brown was born in Peterborough, Ontario on 13 August 1910,[1] to English-born parents George Carmichael Brown and Florence May Brown (née Peters), although the family later settled in Orillia, Ontario.[2] He had two brothers.[3]
An alumnus of Huron University College, he was already an ordained and practising minister of the Anglican Church in Canada,[4] before he volunteered for service in the Canadian Army as part of the Canadian Chaplain Service[5] 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[6] and he was therefore one of the first Canadian Military Chaplains to land in Normandy on Juno Beach on 6 June 1944.[7] Walter Brown was murdered (by bayonetting),[8] after surrendering to members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend on 6 June.[9] He was the only allied military chaplain to suffer this fate, although several were killed and wounded in action in World War II.[10][11] The Hitlerjugend Waffen SS were notoriously brutal[12] and murdered several Canadian Prisoners of War in the early stages of the Normandy Campaign.[13]