Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

- Researched and written by Anthony Stimson - 

Tpr. Gordon Eugene Victor de Reyher, 5’9”, was born in North Adelaide on 1 February 1870, the son of Oscar de Reyher, a music teacher, and his wife, both immigrants from Riga in Latvia, then part of the Russian empire. He was barely two years old when his parents returned to Europe. It was narrow brush with death for him; the clipper ship Yatala ran aground on the French coast on the night of 27 March 1872 and broke up in heavy seas. No lives were lost and his parents, who had lost everything in the wreck, opted to start again in Adelaide.

De Reyher was a Saints old scholar like Wilson; they were much the same age and would have known each other at school. He then spent years in the bush before sailing for South Africa in 1895 at the time of the Jameson Raid. In three years he saw much of the two Boer republics, the South African republic (Transvaal) and Orange Free State, and travelled as far north as Bulawayo in Rhodesia before walking back to Johannesburg alone and on foot. By the time he returned to South Australia in 1898-1899, according to the Register, he spoke ‘the Kaffir and Dutch languages fluently.’

De Reyher gave his occupation as station overseer when volunteering. In South Africa he served with distinction, his command of local languages proving of advantage as a scout and in interrogating prisoners, and in the very last days of 4SAIB’s tour of duty, as the contingent made its way towards Standerton, he gamely rescued a trooper whose horse had been shot from under him. He reportedly declined the offer of promotion in the field and returned to Adelaide with the contingent, but was commissioned as a lieutenant in 4ACH in 1902 and saw further service. He settled in South Africa and was still living there when his mother died, aged 94, in 1919.