Captain Reginald Walter 'Reg' Saunders
Australian War MemorialReg Saunders was the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian army. The son of a First World War veteran, Saunders was born in western Victoria on 7 August 1920 and brought up by his grandmother. Having attended school only sporadically, he found work as a sawmiller but imagined himself going to fight in South America for the poor and oppressed, with whom he felt a kinship.
Very conscious of the service of Aboriginal men during the First World War, Saunders enlisted on 24 April 1940 and, after his initial training, was sent to the Middle East as a reinforcement for the 2/7th battalion. Having survived several encounters with German aircraft in North Africa, Saunders embarked on the ill-fated Greek campaign which he, along with many others, considered a mistake. After Greece his unit fought on Crete where Saunders experienced his first close combat and was forced to remain hidden on the island for twelve months after the German victory.
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