Basil Brown was born in Cheltenham on 25th February 1923. He was the second son of Frank and Emmaline, née Brazener and had an elder brother, Frederick (b1920) and possibly two younger sisters, Joy and Joan. His family moved to Swindon where he attended Ferndale Road Boys’ School. He left school aged 14 and worked for Boots and later as an office boy for British Rail.
Basil enlisted in the Royal Navy, aged 18, in September 1941. He trained as a telegrapher for 18 months at HMS Royal Arthur, Skegness (class of 236); Victory V, Aberdeen; Scotia, Rosyth and Mercury, Portsmouth.
According to his family, he served as a wireless operator on HMS Impulsive on the Arctic Convoys, and later during the D-day landings and in the Pacific.
He served on HMS Impulsive from April 1943 until Nov 1944. During this time, HMS Impulsive is recorded to have escorted Arctic Convoys JW 54A (Nov 1943), RA54B (Nov 1943), JW55B (Dec 1943), RA55B (Dec 1943), JW57 (Feb 1944), JW58 (March 1944), and RA58 (April 1944). His nephew recalled “his main memory from this time was of the dreadful sea conditions, with freezing spray covering the decks, guns and superstructure with ice. When the coating was thick, the weight destabilized the ship with the risk it would turn turtle, so the crew had to spend a lot of time chipping the ice off. On one occasion the captain ordered all hands to one side of the ship; Bas said that this action saved them, for if they had not done this, the ship would have capsized, with the loss of all hands in the freezing water.”
The D-day landings were 6th June 1944. From 2nd May 1944 HMS Impulsive took part in exercises in the English Channels and at the beginning of June they assembled in Portmouth for Operation Neptune. On 6th June, they provided naval gunfire support on Sword Beaches (from Ouistreham to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer) during the landings. Subsequently they were deployed in the Eastern Task Force area on convoy escort and patrol as required. On 27th June, they were still in the Channel area after termination of Operation Neptune.
After a refit in Immingham, in October 1944, they joined 14th Escort Group for convoy defence in Western Approaches, near Liverpool. Basil Brown left the ship in November 1944.
After more onshore training, he joined HMS Montclare on 3rd January 1945. HMS Montclare sailed from the Clyde on 1 March 1945 in convoy via the Suez Canal, reaching Sydney on 20 April 1945. She then sailed to Manus in the Admiralty Islands to support the destroyers of Task Force 57 on Operation Iceberg: the conquest of Okinawa and the Sakishima Islands. Rear Admiral DB Fisher then took her as his flagship for the Pacific Fleet Train (Task Force 112) with the British Pacific Fleet until the war ended. She remained mainly in Manus, a US naval base on Manus Island off Papua New Guinea until 4 September 1945, when she sailed to Hong Kong arriving on 9 September for the re-occupation of the colony. She left Hong Kong on 3 January 1946, her crew having played a vital part in getting the colony back on its feet again. She arrived back in Portsmouth on 21 February 1946.Interestingly, Admiral DB Fisher had also been connected to the Arctic Convoys, as head of Naval Party 100, based in Polyarnoe, Murmansk, Russia, between July 1942 and 1944. Basil Brown left HMS Montclare on 26th Feb 1946 (5 days after arriving back in Portsmouth) and was demobbed on 9th May 1946.
After the war, Basil Brown went on to work for British Rail for 31 years, living in Swindon. He married Joice Reynolds in 1950; they did not have any children. Basil Brown died aged 90 on 8th August 2013, just a few months after he received his Arctic Star. His neice reported he had said he was not too bothered about receiving the medal, but when he got it he was just so pleased and the family was so proud of him.