The Military History Society of NSW

Editor's Comment from the Summer 2019 issue of the Society's quarterly magazine, Reconnaissance . Welcome to the Summer 2019 issue of Reconnaissance . Our longtime member Colin Kay DCM saw active service as a Warrant Officer 2nd  Class in the Australian Army’s Royal Australian Engineers before acquiring a Bachelor of Arts in modern history. Accordingly he brings an engineer’s eye to some of the recurring problems of military history, overcoming hostile terrain, transporting men and materiel quickly and cheaply, turning landscapes into defensible positions, or replacing indefensible landforms with man-made structures. These challenges have typically been the lot of military engineers, who shared the toil if not the glory of war. In this issue of Reconnaissance , Colin focuses his engineer’s perspective on a watershed in military history, and military engineering in particular. Arguably, it was during the Crimean War of 1853-56 that the industrial revolution made it...

For nine year old Les (Lech) Gade, the German occupation of Warsaw, his native city, in September 1939 unleashed an ordeal resulting in destruction of his home, death of his parents, separation from his sisters, and progression from the secret Polish boy scouts to death-defying service as a runner for the underground Polish Home Army’s commander of the Warsaw region during the brave but doomed uprising of 1 August to 2 October 1944. He then spent time in a series of prison camps across Germany before liberation in 1945 and his arrival in Australia as a displaced person in 1949. In conversation with our editor John Muscat, Les will range over the historical, military and personal sides of these dramatic events as well as the fascinating wartime documents he has retained. For those interested in some advance reading, Les’s story appeared in the Autumn 2018 issue of Reconnaissance and was subsequently posted on the Society’s blog at this link http://militaryhistorysocie...