He was killed in the Easter Rising of 1916 while serving with the part-time Volunteer Training Corps (a form of Home Guard).
On Easter Monday the VTC unit he had formed were on an exercise in the Dublin mountains when they received news of the outbreak of the Rising in the city.
Their return route led them across the narrow Mount Street Bridge (Conyngham Bridge) where the men of the 1 (Dublin) battalion VTC in civilian clothes with arm-bands and carrying rifles but not ammunition, came under fire from an Irish Volunteer position at 25 Northumberland Road.
Browning was taken to Beggars Bush Barracks and then to Baggot Street Hospital where he died two days later, aged 47.
The inscription on his gravestone, erected by the IRFU in Dublin's Deans Grange Cemetery includes the wording, "He will live in the memory of all as an honourable comrade and distinguished sportsman.