Background
Frederick Arthur Montague Browning was born on 20 December 1896 at his family home in Kensington, London.
Frederick Arthur Montague Browning was born on 20 December 1896 at his family home in Kensington, London.
Browning sat the entrance examinations for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, on 24 November 1914. Although he did not achieve the necessary scores in all the required subjects, the headmasters of some schools, including Eton, were in a position to recommend students for nomination by the Army Council. The headmaster of Eton, Edward Lyttelton, put Browning's name forward and in this way he entered Sandhurst on 27 December 1914. He graduated on 16 June 1915, and was commissioned a second lieutenant into the Grenadier Guards. Joining such an exclusive regiment, even in wartime, required a personal introduction and an interview by the regimental commander, Colonel Sir Henry Streatfield.
Commissioned in the Grenadier Guards, he reached France on 19 Oct 1915 to join its 2d Bn. Just short of his 19th birthday and looking even younger, he acquired the nickname “Boy” and kept it for life. Browning served in his battalion of the elite Grenadiers throughout the war except for leaves and courses. He became a specialist in trench raids, was appointed to the DSO for valor, and commanded a company before coming of age. (DNB.)
Between the wars the tall, handsome, and impeccably turned-out Guardsman spent four years as adjutant at Sandhurst (1924-28) and from 1935 commanded his Grenadier battalion, mainly on ceremonial duties. He also won three national championships in the high hurdles, running that event with the British Olympic team, and was a bobsledder, sailor, and airplane pilot. From 1939 he held a series of brigadier’s postings in the UK.
In late 1940 Browning was selected to head an experimental airborne formation and was promoted when this became the 1st Abn Div. Maj Gen Browning organized the Airborne Command in Oct 1941. It eventually had 17 brigades, one of which adopted the red beret and the name “Red Devils.” Browning’s elite airborne units were used first for raids, then for battalion- size drops in Eisenhow'er’s "race for Tunis” in Nov 1942.
Browning himself joined Eisenhower’s staff in Algiers five months later to plan the airborne assault on Sicily, the first large Allied airborne operation and the first at night for any army. Inadequately trained pilots were thrown off course by high winds, scattering their drops over a wide area and many were shot down by “friendly fire” from convoys. Only about 12 British gliders some 100 men—landed on or near their objectives. US parachutists under Col James Gavin fared little better. But the scattered survivors “helped greatly to demoralize the defense of Sicily.”
Browning’s force was expanded into an airborne corps for the Normandy invasion, and he was promoted to lieutenant general in Jan 44. The 1st Abn Div was held in reserve and never committed, but the 6th Abn Div under Maj Gen Richard Gale secured the left flank of the British beachhead. Browning also directed the Special Air Service (SAS) of about 2,000 British. French, and Belgians who achieved notable success in Brittany and in sabotaging rail lines leading to battle areas.
The 1st Allied Abn Army Hq was established 2 Aug 1944 under USAAF Lt Gen Lewis H. Brereton with Browning as his deputy and commander of the 1st British Abn Corps. After Brereton, who lacked airborne experience, came up with one idea after another for airborne operations without allowing time for adequate planning. Browning finally threatened to resign. But their differences were resolved and the waspish British airborne authority had a major role in Opn Market-Garden. To control the three divisions of his airborne corps. Browning and his command group landed with Gavin’s US 82d Abn Div near Nijmegen. At the final planning conference on 10 Sep 44 Browning had said to Montgomery “I think we might be going a bridge too far”. This proved to be a sad epitaph for history’s largest airborne operation.
Shortly thereafter Browning went to the SEAC as Mountbatten’s CofS. Despite lack of staff experience the grim guardsman proved to be highly effective in dealing with the army, air, and naval forces of many nationalities that comprised SEAC. When the Japanese supreme commander, Hisaichi Terauchi, pleaded sickness Browming represented Mountbatten at the surrender formalities in Rangoon and Singapore. Terauchi himself handed his swords to Mountbatten in Saigon on 30 Nov 1945.
Browming returned to London to become military secretary to the war minister in late 1946. He resigned in Jan 48 and became comptroller and treasurer to the royal family. Highly successful as a courtier but beginning to suffer from bad health, he resigned in 1959 to live in Cornwall.
Browning married novelist Daphne du Maurier in 1932, and one of their daughters married Montgomery’s only son. David Bernard. Boy Browning died 14 Mar 1965 of heart disease.