After a rain-soaked and Indigenous-themed Remembrance Day ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, hundreds stayed on for the opening of the Captain Reg Saunders Gallery – the first space in the memorial ever to be named after an individual.
Captain Saunders served in North Africa, Greece, Crete and New Guinea during WWII, before serving in the Korean War as a captain – the first Indigenous commissioned officer in the Australian Army.
Those on the VIP guest list for the gallery-naming ceremony included top-ranking defence force chiefs and more than 60 of Reg Saunders’ extended family.
Greek Australian community leaders were also much in evidence with representatives attending from the ACT, NSW and Victoria.
Memorial director Brendan Nelson said the memorial’s council voted unanimously to name the space after Captain Saunders.
“Only one person is going to have his name on anything inside the Australian War Memorial – that’s Reg Saunders,” Dr Nelson said, in an emotional speech that paid tribute to Saunders’ central role in the story of Aboriginal reconciliation in Australia.
In her speech, Glenda Humes, Captain Saunders’ eldest surviving daughter, paid particular tribute to the Cretan people during WWII who gave her father sanctuary for almost a year after the Battle of Crete.
“His experience there, as a young soldier on the run, and the courage and generosity of the Greeks he met, influenced who he became,” said Ms Humes, “and our family will always be grateful for what they did.”
During the ceremony Ms Humes presented Dr Nelson with her father’s military medals, which will become part of the memorial’s collection. They include the medal bestowed on Saunders (and other Australian soldiers who fought in the Greece and Crete campaigns) by the Greek government.
Reg Saunders’ daughter said she and her family were overwhelmed by the decision of the AWM to rename the gallery.
“We thought, ‘what an honour’, particularly when [Dr Nelson] told us that this is the first time a room in the memorial has been named after somebody,” she said.
“You think, ‘wow, that’s my dad’. You don’t always see your dad in the way other people do.”
Ms Humes also donated to the memorial a collection of her father’s wartime private letters.
George Katheklakis, President of the Cretan Association of Canberra and Districts, told Neos Kosmos: “The vision of the AWM is tremendous in recognising Reg Saunders’ service in this way, and in doing so, making a bold step forward in the process of reconciliation.
“Glenda Humes spoke very movingly about the bonds forged between her father and Greece in the war, and it was a great privilege to be at what was a historic occasion.”