General Sir Reginald Byng Stephens, KCB, CMG, DL, JP (10 October 1869 – 6 April 1955) was a British Army general of the First World War and later Commandant of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1919 to 1923, Major-General commanding the 4th Division, 1923 to 1926, and Director-General of the Territorial Army, 1927 to 1931.
The son of Captain Frederick Stephens, late the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards, of Bentworth Lodge, Alton, Hampshire, by his marriage on 13 January 1869 to Cecilia Mary, daughter of Captain H. Byng, of Quendon Hall, Essex, Stephens was educated at Winchester College.
[3] Stephens trained at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's Own) as a second lieutenant on 9 April 1890.
From late 1899 he served in South Africa in the Second Boer War of 1899 to 1902, during which he was severely wounded, was three times mentioned in dispatches (including on 25 April 1902 "for his conduct of a successful attack on a Boer laager of 25 January 1901, and for general good service"),[8] promoted brevet major on 29 November 1900, and received the Queen's South Africa Medal with three clasps and the King's Medal with two clasps.
[2] Following the end of the war, he left Port Natal on the SS Malta in late September 1902, together with other officers and men of the 2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade, who were transferred to Egypt.