RIP Peter Brown, RAF

[cardboard_killer]

Hundreds of mourners attend funeral of one of the last RAF ‘Pilots of the Caribbean’

 

Quote

 Hundreds of people gathered at a London church on Thursday for the funeral of one of the last Black Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots to have fought in World War II.

 

Flight Sergeant Peter Brown, born in Jamaica in 1926, was one of the so-called “Pilots of the Caribbean,” a group of Afro-Caribbean RAF volunteers.

 

The veteran died alone aged 96 at his home in London in December, according to the United Kingdom’s PA Media news agency.

 

Brown’s funeral was held at St. Clement Danes Church, used by the RAF as a place of remembrance to those who served, where his coffin was draped in the Union Flag in front of hundreds of guests.

 

The ceremony was initially set to be much more a modest affair, until an appeal by the local council to give the veteran a more “fitting send-off” was picked up by archivists and historians, which then captured the public imagination.

 

Since the appeal went out, “there has been a search spanning the globe for his relatives and a number of leads were followed up by council officers and genealogists,” Westminster City Council said in a statement in April.