The Military History Society of NSW

Major Adrian Consett Stephen, Croix de Guerre Avec Palme, MC, MID Speech by The Hon. Justice Anthony Meagher of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, 12 November 2018 Adrian Consett Stephen was born in Sydney in 1892. On graduating from university in 1915, he sailed to England to join the British Royal Field Artillery on the Western Front. In March 1918 he was killed by a shell at Zillebeke (near Ypres) in Belgium. He was 25. During his two and a half years of service in the Field Artillery, Consett Stephen was awarded the Croix de Guerre avec palme and the Military Cross. In his letter to his family announcing that he had received the first of those awards, he wrote: On June 1st [1917] the colonel asked me if my name was Adrian Courcett Stephen. I said “Yes, more or less.” “Well, you’ve got the Croix de Guerre” I said, “Thank you, sir, that’s very nice.” And that’s that! … I am now open to be embraced by all the hairy poilus [slang for French infantrymen] that I meet – kissed on both

                                    Reconnaissance is the quarterly magazine of the Military History Society of New South Wales. From the Editor                                           Welcome to the Summer 2022 issue of Reconnaissance . For a long time Australians had a sketchy awareness of the largest single military attack on their soil, the 19 February 1942 Japanese bombing attack on Darwin. In large part because the Australian Government kept the events of that dramatic day under wraps for the duration of the war and well into the post-war era. Today more people know that the local authorities responded poorly in some respects and a degree of civilian panic and military indiscipline took hold. Government concerns about public morale and possibly a sense of shame contributed to a conspiracy of silence. Things have moved on, however, and in recent times some excellent military historians have dragged the episode into the light of day. We are fortunate to have one of them, Dr