Reg Saunders MBE not only survived the World War II battlefields in the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, Crete, and New Guinea, but excelled as a military leader. He was recommended for officer training and, in 1944, returned to New Guinea as a platoon commander—the first Aboriginal Australian to serve as a commissioned officer. What happened during the war to transform a determined young soldier from country Victoria into a war hero—one who would go on to serve with distinction in the Korean War, and become a pioneering figure for Indigenous rights?