Henry Brown "North Africa Campaign"

Henry Brown

Trooper Royal Tank Regiment, R.A.C.

Service number 7949609

Died 29 April 1943, Age 20

He is buried at Medjez-el-Bab Waw Cemetery, Tunisia 13.B.16

Henry was the Son of Albert Victor Brown and Lilian Maud Brown of 3 Greenway Totteridge

Born in 1923, Brown was a member of the Royal Tank Regiment. As a member of Britain's armoured warfare forces, operating tanks and other armoured vehicles in combat against Axis forces.

At just 20 years old, he represented the youth of Britain who answered their nation's call during the darkest hours of the global conflict. Like many young men of his generation, Henry's life was cut tragically short by the realities of war.

The North African Campaign, in which Trooper Brown served, began on November 8, 1942, when Commonwealth and American troops made a series of landings in Algeria and Morocco. The German forces responded swiftly by sending reinforcements from Sicily to northern Tunisia, halting the Allied advance eastward by early December of that year.

Meanwhile, in the south, Axis forces defeated at El Alamein were retreating into Tunisia along the coastal routes through Libya, pursued relentlessly by the Allied Eighth Army. By mid-April 1943, the combined Axis forces had been compressed into a small pocket in north-eastern Tunisia, with Allied forces positioning themselves for what would become the final offensive of the campaign.

Trooper Henry Brown died on April 29, 1943, during what historians recognise as the decisive phase of the Allied offensive in Tunisia. His death came just two weeks before the official end of the campaign in North Africa, which concluded in May 1943 with the defeat of the Axis powers by the combined Allied forces.

The timing of his death suggests that Brown was likely involved in the intense fighting that characterised the final push to drive Axis forces from North Africa. As a member of the Royal Tank Regiment, he would have been at the forefront of armoured operations during this critical campaign phase.

Medjez-el-Bab was strategically important as it marked the limit of the Allied advance in December 1942 and remained on the front line until the decisive Allied advances of April and May 1943.