While Harold Brown was gunned down by Nazis while fighting in Italy, his men thought he was done for. Yet his funeral would have to wait — for 70 years.

“He was lying on the ground and they thought he was probably dead,” said Honorary Colonel Brig.-Gen. (retired) Ernest Beno.

Brown wasn’t killed in that 1943 attack and he wasn’t done fighting, resuming his post as commanding officer of 1st Field Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery after a hospital stay. He was laid to rest in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery Saturday.

Brig.-Gen. Harold Brown, 103 when he died on Oct. 15, was believed to be the last of the Second World War’s Canadian commanding officers.

“In my mind, he’s one of the finest of Canada’s greatest generation,” Beno told the Star after the service. “He gave his life to Canada and doing what was right.”

While in Italy, Brown employed a William target — an extremely rare military operation that calls for the use of all available weapons to fire on a single target, in this case, the German defensive fortification known as the Hitler Line, according to his biography.

He received the Order of the British Empire for exemplary performance and leadership.

Brown went on to participate in peacekeeping missions in Egypt and Vietnam. Closer to home, he was the honorary lieutenant colonel and honorary colonel of the 7th Toronto Regiment from 1986-1991.

Draped in a Canadian flag topped with his numerous medals of honour, Brown’s casket was lowered into the ground Saturday as bagpipes played in the background. A short distance away, an honour guard fired a three-volley salute to the decorated veteran.

Lt.-Col. Paul Szabonio of the 7th Toronto Regiment said Brown was an inspiration to young solders.

“Any time you would be feeling down, tired, wallowing in self-pity, you would think of this man who could easily run up a flight of stairs until a year or two years ago,” he said.

In Sept. 2010, Brown presented his grandson Mark Soteroff, an Afghanistan veteran who was wounded in action, with a Sacrifice Medal on behalf of the Royal Regiment of Canada.

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Brown’s son, Peter, said his father was a loving man, admired by many.

“He was a leader of men,” he said.