Waters

Approximately 3000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders participated in the Second World War as formally enlisted servicemen or women.1 Yet despite the scale of their war effort, and the fact that some like Tim Hughes and Clive Upright displayed outstanding courage in battle, few Australians, especially white Australians, know much of their contribution to national defence. Tim Hughes, a soldier in the 2/10th Battalion, won the Military Medal for outstanding bravery in the tough fighting around Buna airstrip in New Guinea in 1943.2 Clive Upright also won the Military Medal when, in the fighting around Sauri village on Bougainville on 11 May 1945, he coolly stood up and in full view of the enemy, directed the fire of an Australian machinegun onto nearby Japanese positions.3 But during the Second World War, news of the scale and quality of the participation of Aborigines and Islanders was overwhelmed by other war news judged to be of more immediate importance to white Australians. Since the war this silence has been maintained. As a result, Aboriginal military heroes have so far emerged from among those who participated in the frontier wars; men like Pemulwuy and Pigeon (Jandamarra) who demonstrated their military prowess in the struggle against Whites. With the possible exception of Reg Saunders who was the only Aborigine to be promoted to commissioned rank in the Australian forces during the Second World War, those who gave outstanding service in defence of their country in Australia's numerous wars this century, have been overlooked. Nevertheless, many of the Aboriginal and Islander participants in Australia's defence effort did demonstrate a particular kind of heroism; that despite the disadvantages forced upon them by the dominant white society, once given the opportunity that often comes with war, they showed high levels of determination, achievement, skill and leadership. One such man to emerge from the Second World War was Leonard Waters

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