Born and raised in Mahaffey, Pennsylvania, Brown was one of ten children of Edward D. and Rhoda V. Jones Brown. He enjoyed skiing, ice skating, swimming, and fishing. He worked as a mechanic before dropping out of high school and enlisting in the Army at age seventeen in October 1948. He was inspired by his older brother Donald, who had joined the military earlier and was stationed in Japan; two other Brown brothers would also serve in the military. Melvin Brown was sent to Japan, where he stayed for eighteen months until late July 1950 when he was deployed to Korea in the first weeks of the war there.