Casualty of WWII, Leading Seaman Thomas William Brown GM Service No:C/NX 2661 - Royal Navy-H.M.S. Belfast is the youngest person to have ever received the George Medal. He lied about his age at enlistment and when his age became known to the authorities, as a result of his actions aboard HMS Petard,* it cost him his posting but he was not discharged from the NAAFI.He was a Canteen Assistant, promoted to Senior Canteen Assistant following his heroism in the incident on 30 Oct 1942, when HMS Petard was in waters off Port Said on the Egyptian coast investigating reports of radar contact with a German submarine, later identified as U-559. Having crippled the submarine with Petard's guns,Lieutenant Fasson and Able Seaman Grazier dived into the sea and swam to the submarine, with Brown following them over. The two navy men made their way into the captain's cabin where Fasson found a set of keys, unlocking drawers, they found two code books, a short weather cipher and short signal book. The German crew had opened the boat's seacocks before abandoning ship causing the vessel to rapidly take on water.Brown took the role of transporting these documents up and down the iron ladder of the U-boat's conning tower to Petard's whaler, making the trips up with one hand while holding the documents in the other hand. Following his third trip down and up the ladder, he called for his colleagues to join him but the submarine sank before they could. Brown himself was dragged under with the submarine but managed to fight his way back to the surface where the crew of the whaler pulled him out of the water. Unknown to Brown, the documents that he, Fasson and Grazier retrieved turned out to be essential to the British efforts at Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma code as they contained the key to the code itself. This in turn meant that allied convoys in the Atlantic could be directed away from known U-Boat locations during 1943. Winston Churchill would describe the actions of the crew of Petard as being crucial to the outcome of the war. Brown would never find out the contents of those documents, with information relating to Enigma only being released some decades after his death.In 1985, his brothers Stan and David presented the NAAFI with Brown's medals to be displayed at the Bletchley Park Museum in Buckinghamshire. In 1987, a stained glass window was dedicated to his memory in his home town at the Saville Exchange building.The museum has since closed, and Brown's medals are now on display at the NAAFI headquarters in Darlington, moving there to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the NAAFI in April 2010, with a ceremony being held to celebrate the return of Brown's medal to the north east. In attendance were five of his siblings, Lillian, Sylvia, Norman, Nancy and Albert.

In this incident, his two ship-mates lost their lives. They were:

Lieutenant Francis Anthony Blair Fasson,GC

Able Seaman Colin Grazier GC

They were both posthumously awarded the George Cross. Brown was awarded the George Medal instead of the GC, because he was deemed to have performed a lesser act of gallantry, and not because he was a Civilian,[due to his NAAFI employment,]as stated by some sources. He returned to North Shields and in 1945 while on shore leave from HMS Belfast, which was being refitted for the Far East, he was staying at his nearby family home in Lily Gardens, Ridge Estate, at South Shields, attending on board Belfast every day.
He died, aged 19, in a vain attempt to rescue his youngest sister Maureen, aged 4, from a fire which broke out in the early hours of 13 February 1945 in the family home. He was on active service, so was a casualty of WWII and he was buried with full military honours in Tynemouth Cemetery.
Death Registrations:
Deaths Mar 1945
Brown Maureen 4 Tynemouth 10b 310
Brown Thomas W 19 Tynemouth 10b 310
He was the son of Thomas William and Margaret Brown of North Shields.

* HMS Petard, a1,540 ton destroyer, was the only allied warship to sink a German, and Italian and a Japanese submarine during WW2.