W. MAURICE BROWN (1910-1975)
William Maurice Brown was a multi-dimensional character. He was a Lieutenant Colonel, a Squadron Leader, recipient of Britain's Order of the British Empire (OBE), an Observer (Extraordinary) of the United Nations, a Minister of the New Zealand Government, a mountain climber, a shooter, a boxer, a rugger, a cricketer, a teacher, an administrator, a builder, a humanist, and an internationalist – all in one. The chief architect of cadet colleges in the country and a long-serving Principal of Faujdarhat Cadet College, Col Brown is no more, but his timeless legend will continue to live on. Col Brown, the hero of a lifetime, will forever live in the admiring hearts of his numerous students.
By nationality a New Zealander, Principal Brown was born in 1910. He spent his school days in Waikato province. In 1930, after achieving a teaching diploma from Auckland Teacher's Training College and a degree in history from Auckland University College, he worked in various schools and colleges there. He was commissioned in the First Auckland Regiment in 1931. During the war (the Second World War) he joined the Royal Air Force and served in India, Malaya, New Zealand, and the UK. After the war, he served the Royal Air Force as a Squadron Leader and later the Royal New Zealand Air force. Then he proceeded to earn an Honors degree in Geography specializing in Geomorphology from King's College, Cambridge University with a government scholarship. He also spent some time in Scott Polar Research, studying some of his favorite interests - mountains, snow, and ice. Back in his country in the early 50s, he joined university teaching before returning to his old love, the army, and a host of different activities overseas.
He served the UN as New Zealand Representative and Military Observer in UNIMOGIP in Kashmir. Then in the Middle East, he was successively the Chairman of the Israeli-Egyptian Mixed Armistice Commission, for the UN Troops' Supervisory Organization in the Gaza Strip, and later in 1958 as Chief Military Observer of the UN in Lebanon. Immediately after, he joined Faujdarhat Cadet College, then known as East Pakistan Cadet College, in August 1958.
Under his able leadership, during the initial seven years of the college, the institution prospered remarkably through the tremendous wealth of his wide and varied experience that he had gained from his eventful past. During his monumental tenure as the college's founder principal, he guided the college firmly, steadily, and masterfully to its exalted destiny. His contribution to the overall growth of the college starting from the construction of its infrastructures to the setting of its glorious traditions will eternalize his name and continue to celebrate his exceptional genius that worked behind it. His keen interest in the total development of his cadets and his dedicated enterprise to give them the best possible education, in particular, proved amazingly effective. He saw the college through its teething troubles right in its very early stage and led it to a place of high repute in the educational world. His counseling never ended until his students could carve out successful careers for themselves.
It was at an institute in Dhaka on 25 December 1963 that the then President of Pakistan, Field Marshal M Ayub Khan, the dreamer of the college, awarded the Sitara-e -Quadi-e Azam to Principal Brown. Colonel Brown gave all he had for the development of the college and for the welfare of its cadets, i.e "the boys" as he used to call them most lovingly. In this great effort, his wife, whose interest was beyond the normal periphery of work for a Principal's wife, had ably supported and helped him. Mrs. Brown for all the years of her stay at Faujdarhat did a full-time voluntary job in college administration out of sheer pleasure and eagerness. An outstanding lady, she shared her husband's work through the entire time the principal worked in his office every day. Admirably, it was an obvious sense of belonging to the college and her motherly love for the boys that always prompted her. We will continue to remember Colonel and Mrs. Brown with very high regard and will always keep paying a singular tribute to their numerous virtues. Their illustrious memories are enshrined in the college they nurtured to have it thrive as it does today.