With ANZAC Day approaching, over the next few weeks, we will recognise and honour some of our Old Boys who served (fallen and returned) so we can enjoy the freedoms we do. All 116 fallen Old Boys and 3 fallen Staff are recorded in The Field of Honour, a book authored by James Mason OAM (past Staff) which was commissioned by the school. Copies of this book are available for purchase online or at the Churchie Shop.

Lloyd Hadley DFC (1933) attended Churchie from 1930 to 1933, during which time he was a member of the GPS Track & Field teams of 1932 and 1933. On leaving, after the Junior Public Examination in 1933, he entered the public service and worked with the Department of Labour. Lloyd was 24 when he enlisted in the Air Force in November 1940 and completed his pilot training in Brisbane before embarking for Britain in December 1941.

Attached to 460 Squadron, in June 1943 Lloyd was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for ‘courage and initiative that had an inspiring effect upon other members of his crew’. Ten days later, while serving in Bomber Command, he was killed over Germany. Lloyd was in a Lancaster W 4329, one of twenty-two aircraft from the squadron which left from RAF Binbrook on 12 June 1943 to attack Bochum, Germany. Nothing was heard from the aircraft after take-off and it did not return to base. The entire crew of 7 were killed and are interred in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery at Kleve in Germany.

In a letter from Canon Morris to Lloyd’s mother, he wrote: “We did honour to his memory at the last School Assembly, by standing to attention in silence as we do for all fallen heroes who are Old Boys of the School.” In the same letter, he also wrote: “The price we are paying for liberty and freedom is terribly high. It is a measure of what the nation owes to the near relatives of those who have fallen and to the fallen. Our Old Boys who have fallen will have a worthy memorial in some shrine and place of Honour at the School, besides a record of their service and sacrifice in our Rolls. We would venture humbly at School to share with parents both their sorrow and their pride in their boys’ noble sacrifice.”