The Browns Of

Rarotonga

"Alec" is Missing—So Alan is on the Way

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Rarotonga, Sept. 23.

ON September 15, 1942, Sergeant Alex ander Brown, RNZAF, a Cook Islands Euronesian by birth, was reported missing over Germany.

The Brown brothers, of Rarotonga, of whom there are six, are sons of a Scottish trader, who lived on the island

of Mangaia for many years, and who died in the ’twenties. Dick, the eldest, is a well-known storekeeper and fruit mer chant. It was he who managed to send young “Alec” to New Zealand, when a boy of thirteen, to be brought up in the ways of his father, and the cost of his education to the last penny was paid by the other brothers.

Alec was the first man from the Cook Islands to join the RNZAF, early in the war, and was sent to Canada for training shortly afterwards. He passed with the rank of sergeant and was stationed in Scotland. While in Scotland he wrote home to Rarotonga for the address of the Brown relations in the Northern Hemis sphere, but unfortunately the reply was too late —it never reached him.

Feeling that there is something to be avenged, the Cook Islands Browns have sent another brother to take Alec’s place.

Alan Brown, who was in partnership with his brother Dick in various enterprises, pulled out recently and left for New Zealand, with the expressed intention of joining the Air Force if humanly possible.

Poor old Schickelgruber and his race theories —he didn’t know what he was up

against!

Sergeant Alexander Brown,