Service dress tunic : Lieutenant C G Saunders, 3 Australian Armoured Regiment

Officer's khaki wool twill winter service dress tunic with pointed cuffs, self fabric belt with oxidised copper buckle, pleated breast pockets with triple pointed flaps and expanding pockets over each hip with rectangular flaps. A centre back vent extends from the waist to the skirt hem. The tunic has oxidised copper AMF buttons, Rising Sun collar badges and rank pips for lieutenant. There are wool flannel colour patches at the top of each sleeve for 3rd Armoured Regiment. The body of the tunic is lined with khaki cotton and the sleeves with white cotton with a fine blue and brown striped pattern. A woven manufacturer's label inside the back neck reads 'Sandhurst/ KITCHENER & Co/ 44 HUNTER ST SYDNEY' and is typed with the owner's details 'LT. C.G. SAUNDERS'.

Worn by N84733 Lieutenant Colin Gallimore Saunders while he was serving in 3 Australian Armoured Regiment. Born in Sydney in 1917, Saunders was working as an accountancy clerk when he enlisted, as a private, for service in the Second World War, on 12 August 1940. He was promoted to lance corporal in November 1940, to sergeant in April 1941 and appointed a lieutenant in December 1941, shortly after he had been transferred to the Armoured Fighting Vehicle School at Puckapunyal in Victoria. While leading a convoy on the Clyde Mountain-Nelligan Road, near Bateman's Bay in New South Wales, Saunders' leading vehicle, in which he was a passenger, rolled down a slope after the road shoulder collapsed and he received a large depressed fracture of the skull. After medical treatment in Goulburn he was assessed as being unfit for active military service and was discharged on 9 October 1942. Saunders died in 2003.