Reginald Walter "Reg" Saunders, MBE (7 August 1920 – 2 March 1990) was the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army. He came from a military family, his forebears having served in the Boer War and the First World War. Enlisting as a soldier in 1940, he saw action during the Second World War in North Africa, Greece and Crete, before being commissioned as a lieutenant and serving as a platoon commander in New Guinea during 1944–45. His younger brother Harry also joined the Army, and was killed in 1942. Wikipedia