Obituary: Lt-Col Andrew Wilkie Brown MBE, soldier who served his country the world over after joining the army as a musician

AS A boy, his soaring soprano voice rang out in Edinburgh’s St Mary’s Cathedral, taking the lead in such classics as Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Passions.

And as a talented young pianist, who once hoped to be the cathedral organist, he went on to become an army bandsman, touring the country with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

But it was in a far-flung theatre of war that Andrew Brown inadvertently found fame when the image of him, as a young sergeant escorting a column of 2000 captured Italian soldiers, made headlines.

Wearing shorts and tin helmet and carrying only a revolver for protection, he was pictured in the Daily Mail, along with his colleague, a lance corporal, leading the stream of defeated fighters across the desert.

Taken after the battle for Libya in the winter of 1940-41, the caption on the photograph read: “Marching ahead are the British escort – one bayonet, one revolver – all that were needed to guard a beaten army”. However, it was The Scotsman that had led him into the army originally, via a newspaper advert for a piano player in a military band.

He was born into a musical family in Edinburgh in a Stockbridge tenement. The young Brown, a pupil at Flora Stevenson’s School in Comely Bank, joined the choir school at St Mary’s Cathedral where he became lead soprano soloist. He also played the piano and the organ but a love of jazz took over and at 16 he was playing piano in a local jazz band.

Initially employed as a clerk after leaving school, in 1933 he spotted the advert in The Scotsman for a pianist and that September he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, where he also took up the French horn. Tours around the UK and Europe followed until the Second World War intervened and he sailed for Palestine with the regiment’s 1st Battalion.

They were sent to Egypt in September 1940, going into action against the Italians at Sidi Barrani – where the photograph was taken – before returning to the Western Desert in April 1941.

Evacuated from the German parachute invasion of Crete, which cost the battalion heavy casualties, he then travelled extensively during the remainder of the war to Eritrea, Abyssinia, Sudan, Sicily and mainland Italy, including to the battle of Monte Casino, eventually reaching Belgium and Germany.

He progressed through the ranks, being commissioned as a quartermaster in 1944 and, after victory, he went on to serve in Malaya and Korea and was made an MBE in 1952.

Later, while stationed in Hong Kong, he met and married his wife Peggy Griffiths, a Navy nursing sister.

He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and then served at Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) in Holland. He also served in British Guyana, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, retiring from the army in 1970. He settled with his family in Aberdeen and remained at the city’s Bridge of Don barracks as a retired administrative officer for another decade.

However, he continued to work, as a credit controller with a small electrical firm, before finally retiring completely at 70.

His leisure interests included curling, the stock market and his prize-winning garden. He was still curling at the age of 86 and had been skip for an Aberdeen curling club and the Highland Brigade and was lucky enough to take part in the last grand match on the Lake of Menteith in 1979. He was also president of the North East Scotland branch of the British Korean Veterans Association and an active member of the Crete Veterans Association.

His son-in-law, Garry Thomas, said: “Andrew was very proud of his time in this world, the stories of which were best told by him with a Laphroig in hand, which he deemed to be the medicinal secret of his longevity.

“He had the natural ability to capture people’s attention and to focus on the positives and humorous aspects of his experiences.

“After the birth of his grandchildren, Jake, Janine, Lloyd and Joanne, and the death of his beloved wife Peggy in 1995, who often pleaded with him to record his stories on paper, he wrote – dictated from memory – A Memoir from Music to War; an honest and witty account of his amazing life.”

So popular was his story that though only 30 copies were printed initially, more than a thousand are now in circulation.

Predeceased by wife Peggy and his grandson Jake, Andrew Brown is survived by his daughters, Fiona and Avril, and grandchildren Janine, Lloyd and Joanne. ALISON SHAW