Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

From Michael Ganey, Montbrehain Centenary, 10/2018

Urban Brown was born in Prahran to William and Winifred Brown and he had four brothers and two sisters. He grew up in Mentone, Melbourne, as his father was a Fireman at the Mentone Fire Station. He claimed he was 18 years of age when he enlisted on the 6th September 1915. As the birth deaths and marriage records show that he was born on the 25th April 1900, he was actually only 15 years old when he enlisted.
He went to the Broadmeadows signaller school and the embarked as part of the 13th reinforcements to the 5th Battalion. As soon as he arrived in England he became sick with pleurisy and then pneumonia. In July 1916 the doctors noted in his medical records that ‘The patient was a very young and delicate looking boy.’ They now were aware of his age. In August 1916 he was medically discharged and returned to Australia.
He re-enlisted on the 20th February 1917 and again nobody questioned his age, This time, he listed himself as 19 years of age and he re-embarked on the 11th of May 1917, aboard the HMAT A11 Ascanius.
During training in England he was charged with being away without leave for 2 days and lost 10 days pay. He was then assigned to the 24th Battalion as part of its 19th reinforcements was taken on strength in the field on the 23rd of November 1917. During his service with the battalion he was sick with Trench Fever and was slightly wounded on one occasion in the forehead by an exploding bomb whilst patrolling no mans land.
He took part in the assault on Montbrehain on the 5th October 1918, and was hit in the arm and abdomen by shrapnel at about 8.30 in the morning. When he was carried away by the stretcher-bearers, others noted him as being ‘cheerful’. He was taken to the 5th Australian Field Ambulance where he died at about 3.30 in the afternoon.
He died at the grand old age of 18 years and 5 months.
Private Urban Henry Brown lies in the Templeux Le Guerand Communal Cemetery in plot C 42.
His mother supplied the inscription on his head stone.
Dearly Loved Son
Of W.H. and W.M. Brown
And Brother of William
Late AIF.

After the war, cross checking at the Imperial War Graves commission, showed that another soldier, ‘W.H. Brown, Service Number 6794’ was also recorded as being buried in the Calvaire New British Cemetery. A ‘special exhumation’ was performed on this grave and identity discs found on the body proved that this soldier was in fact that of William Walsh, Service number 2217, also of the 24th Battalion. This error was rectified.
This type of mistake was not that un-common on the battlefields of World War 1, but the crosschecking and diligence of the commission then, and now is paramount in their charter. However, the commission’s records still indicate that Urban was 21 years of age when he died.
Urban’s elder brother, William Henry Brown, also served and returned to Australia in December 1918.
One of Urbans’s younger brothers, Eric Stanislaus Brown, served with the 2/2nd Field Regiment in WW2 and was awarded a Military Medal for action in Greece in April 1941.
Urban Brown is also remembered on the Mentone War Memorial.

Previously served as No. 4346, 5th Battalion