Fitting tribute: A packed St Clement Danes – the Central Church of the RAF – for Flight Sergeant Peter Brown

FRIENDS and neighbours were among hundreds of mourners to join a final farewell to one of the last “pilots of the Caribbean” at a moving RAF church ceremony.

Flight Sergeant Peter Brown, originally from Jamaica, died before Christmas aged 96 at the home he had lived at in Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, for 50 years.

The full military send-off, in St Clement Danes Church, had to be booked after a council-funded crematorium service in Mortlake was judged too small to hold the crowds.

In March the Extra was the first to report that the airman had died alone at home and was due to be given a so-called “pauper’s funeral” without full military honours.

National newspapers followed up on the story leading to prime minister Rishi Sunak calling for a fitting service, given his wartime heroism.

Speaking at the service, a neighbour of Mr Brown and a former deputy leader of the council, the Little Venice ward councillor Melvyn Caplan, told the service about a quiet man who loved cricket, whiskey with ginger ale, cheese and onion crisps, and a dairy milk chocolate bar from his favourite shop Dhigs in Formosa Street.

He said: “Conversations would only last for as long as he wanted to. He was proud and dignified, but hard to help. I recall frequent conversations about what we could do to help. But we had to respect what he would accept. He had an old-fashioned charm. He dressed in clothes that had seen better days, but he always looked snappy.

“I’m not sure what he would say about it all, but I think he would have complained about all the fuss. I’d have said to him, ‘be quiet Peter, you gave us everything and no one can thank you more’. RIP, what a man.”

Cllr Caplan added: “He loved travelling around Europe.

Flight Sergeant Peter Brown

“Some favourite places to visit were Spain, Italy and France. But he was very reticent about talking about his time in the RAF. He shrugged it off and played a straight bat as his heroes would have done at Lord’s.

“Cricket played a huge part in his life. He was a member of MCC for 30 years, happiest sporting the tie and off to enjoy a day’s adventure, a day of cricket. What a great innings he had. He nearly reached that century. He played with great flair and panache.”

Mr Brown was passionate about the game and was a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club until 2016.

Born in Jamaica in 1926, Mr Brown enlisted as an RAF reserve in 1943 and trained as a wireless operator and air gunner. He flew with five Lancaster bomber missions in Tripoli, Egypt and Malta before leaving in 1950.

Mr Brown’s coffin was brought into the church clad in the Union Flag with Edward Elgar’s Nimrod playing.

The RAF’s chief of staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, attended the service, along with hundreds of members of the public, other members of the armed forces, representatives of the Caribbean community, friends and neighbours.

Several celebrities were also at the service, including Batman Begins and Outlander actor Colin McFarlane, Top Boy star Michael Ward and Trevor Michael Georges, who plays Ed Bailey in Coronation Street.

Rev Mark Perry from the RAF told the service that in May 1941 St Clem-ent Danes, in the Strand, – the Central Church of the RAF – had been hit by an incendiary bomb.

Considered the “spiritual home” of the RAF, it had been restored following a worldwide appeal and reconsecrated in a visit by Elizabeth II.

A poem was read out about how heroes come in “all shapes and sizes” and how his life was ending on “a final flight through adversity to the stars”.

Rev Ruth Hake said Mr Brown’s purpose was “to protect this country from invasion and help regain peace in the world”, adding: “But 17-year-old Peter didn’t know that. The willingness to put his life on the line on behalf of this nation… is a debt that all of us who have certainly lived our lives in freedom in this country have to honour.”

Singer Maurillia Simpson – who did three tours of Iraq and is now in a wheelchair – said she was pleased to see “female veterans like myself and who look like me here today”.

She sang a song about sparrows and recalled her own experience of war, adding: “That song is the only thing that kept me alive when I was blown up in Iraq.

“I know how it feels to want to die, and not. I have surgery coming up that will let me make my first couple of steps in the last 15 years. So god has been good.”