NATO Chief to Award Filey Sailor Alliance’s Top Personnel Award

A date with NATO’s most senior military officer in Europe awaits Royal Navy Warrant Officer Matt Brown as he receives one of the Alliance’s highest awards.

The 45-year-old caterer from North Yorkshire has been named the Allied Command Operations Military Member of the Year – marking him out from hundreds of senior ratings/senior non-commissioned officers from across the alliance serving at its various headquarters.

The award is due to be presented by General Christopher G Cavoli at his HQ near Mons in Belgium, recognition of Matt’s outstanding contribution to the smooth functioning of key events and visits by military and civilian VVIPs to NATO’s Joint Force Command headquarters in Naples.

With a 28-year career in catering services, Matt has regularly been at the heart of key defence engagement events and hospitality.

Those skills and Matt’s wealth of experience were put to the test as a protocol assistant at NATO’s nerve centre in Italy – one of three headquarters responsible for planning and conducting combined exercises and operations by land, sea and air.

Matt was a key member of a small multinational team dealing with the highest political and military figures across the 32-nations alliance and partner nations, who would regularly visit or attend conferences at the Naples Headquarters or observe major exercises in the central Mediterranean.

It meant meeting all the needs of visitors – sometimes royalty – and ensuring their security, covering everything from transportation, arranging escorts (whether military guides or police escorts), sorting out hotels and catering, to setting up conferences, ensuring media expectations were met, even the design and production of information packs: as Matt sums it up, “pretty much everything behind the scenes of anything high-profile”.

His time in Naples spanned key events such as the accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance as well as NATO’s 75th anniversary celebrations, plus calendar events such as Christmas and summer socials, or changes of command.

He conducted secondary duties as the RN’s Executive Warrant Officer, overseeing all Royal Navy ranks stationed at the NATO HQ, and volunteered to help make life better for the deployed UK forces and their families, throwing himself into community events. That included teaching Naples 1st Scout Group cookery skills, leading the International Food Festival, assisting the International Club with the Great British Brunch and introducing  allies to staples of British/RN life: Burns and Trafalgar Night celebrations. And for 47 consecutive days he rowed a half marathon (covering half the distance from Italy to UK with his RAF counterpart cycling the remainder), raising more than £3,000 for Sunrise Wellbeing Mental Health Services.

All Matt’s superiors in Naples named him their Military Member of the Year Award – introduced in 2013 to recognise exceptional service and dedication by junior ranks/non-commissioned officers/junior officers.

His citation concludes: 

“Matt’s exceptional leadership and outstanding work ethic are simply inspiring and most deserving of recognition.”

Winning the title in Naples made the warrant officer eligible for the alliance’s top award across its several commands and headquarters.

Only when he received an invite to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe did his success – and achievement – sink in, he says, although he credits the whole protocol team for much of that success and his wife Katie and seven-year-old son Ronnie for all the time he should have been spending at home.

Originally from Filey in North Yorkshire, Matt joined the Royal Navy aged 16, spending most of his career in Portsmouth-based warships or with the Fleet Air Arm at Yeovilton.

Matt left Naples in February and is now serving at DE&S Abbey Wood near Bristol, where he’s deputy operations manager for ‘equipment, domestics and habitability’, responsible for ‘domestic services’: galley and laundry equipment and calorifiers (water heaters). He acts as the liaison between the Fleet and contractors to minimise and rectify any defects and ensure ships and submarines remain operational.