Thomas William Brown GM ( 1926 – 13 February 1945) was an English recipient of the George Medal, one of the youngest persons to have ever received that award. In October 1942, as a NAAFI canteen assistant, he was involved in the action between Petard and , being one of three men to board the sinking submarine in an effort to retrieve vital documents, and was the only one of the three to survive. These documents would later lead the Bletchley Park codebreakers to crack the German Enigma code. After this heroic deed, it was revealed that he was underage to be at sea. He returned home to North Shields. In 1945 he died from injuries sustained while rescuing his sister Maureen from a house fire in North Shields Ridges Estate whilst on leave from HMS Belfast. His family were presented with his medal by King George VI in 1945, and later presented it to the NAAFI in 1985. NAAFI career At the age of 15, Brown joined the NAAFI and was assigned as a Canteen Assistant onboard , a P class destroyer, for service during World War II. Unlike other services, the NAAFI only accepted men from the age of 17 onwards, so Brown had to lie about his age to join. On 30 October 1942, Petard was in the waters off the coast of Port Said, Egypt. They were being sent to relieve , and to investigate radar contact with a submarine along with , , , and Vickers Wellesley light bombers of No. 47 Squadron RAF. After ten hours of depth charge attacks, U-559 came to the surface, it being identified by its distinctive white donkey emblem on its conning tower. Petard fired her 4–inch guns at the submarine, causing such damage that the crew abandoned ship. Petard then launched a boarding party in a seaboat. Lieutenant Francis Anthony Blair Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier dived into the sea and swam to the submarine, with Brown following them over. The German crew had opened the boat's seacocks, and water was pouring into the vessel. The two Navy men made their way into the captain's cabin where Fasson found a set of keys. They unlocked drawers and found two code books: the Short Weather Cipher and Short Signal Book. Brown carried these documents up the iron ladder of the U-boat's conning tower to Petard'''s whaler, climbing with