George Gittoes General John Sanderson in Cambodia

General John Sanderson was born in Geraldton, Western Australia in 1940. He graduated as a soldier from RM College, Duntroon in 1961. Sanderson served in East Malaysia and South Vietnam and remains in service despite incurring war injuries.

Sanderson was the military commander of the UN Social Reconstruction Project and international peace-keeping forces in Cambodia over the years 1992-93. He was commissioned as the Australian Army’s chief of general staff in Canberra in July 1995.

George Gittoes has painted Sanderson at Sisiphon on the steps of one of the many genocide memorials erected by the Vietnamese. 'Beside him,’ says the artist 'is one of the many children whose destiny depended on the success of the first democratic election in Cambodia.’