Reg Saunders
Reginald Walter Saunders, MBE, was the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army. He saw action during the Second World War in North Africa, Greece and Crete. He later served as a company commander with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment during the Korean War. In 1971, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his community service.
About Reg Saunders in brief
Reginald Walter Saunders, MBE, was the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army. He saw action during the Second World War in North Africa, Greece and Crete. After the war, Saunders was demobilised and returned to civilian life. He later served as a company commander with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment during the Korean War. In 1971, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his community service. He died in 1990, aged 69. He was a member of the Gunditjmara people. His father, Chris, was a veteran of the First World War. His younger brother Harry also joined the Army, and was killed in 1942 during the Kokoda Track campaign. He came from a military family, his forebears having served in the Boer War and the First WWI. His mother died in 1924 from complications caused by pneumonia while giving birth to her third child, a girl who also died. He worked and furthered his education until 1937, when he went into business with his father and brother, operating a sawmill in Portland, Victoria. After this, he went to work at the age of 14 as a millhand in asawmill. He did well in maths, geometry and languages, and his father, meanwhile, taught Reg and Harry about the bush, and encouraged them to read Shakespeare and Australian literature. After completing eight years of schooling, Saunders earned his merit certificate. He then worked in the logging and metal industries, before joining the Office of Aboriginal Affairs as a liaison officer in 1969.
He retired from the OAA in 1986, aged 70. He is buried in Lake Condah, Victoria, with his brother Harry, who was born in 1922. He also had a son, Reginald, who served with the 29th Battalion in France and was awarded the Military Medal for service with the Victorian Rifles and the Australian Commonwealth Horse in the First War. He served in New Guinea during 1944–1945, and later in New Zealand during 1944-1945. Saunders enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 24 April 1940, joining up with friends he had made while playing Australian rules football. At the time, the armed forces later adopted a policy to accept only persons “substantially of European origin or descent”, but at the time Saunders encountered no barriers to his enlistment. He recalled that his fellow soldiers were not colour-conscious, and that during training in northern Queensland his white mates would sit alongside him in the “Aboriginal” section of movie theatres. Saunders was allocated to an infantry unit, the 27th Battalion, which was serving overseas at theTime of the Battle of Kapyong. His first experience of war came in early April 1941, when the 6th Division was attacked in Suda by German aircraft and began to sink the British ship, Kalamata. It was originally bound for Alexandria, but after the ship was evacuated, several men were picked up by British troops and sent to Greece.
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This page is based on the article Reg Saunders published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
