How Indigenous digger Percy French’s WWI service helped his family to reunite

When Percy French was sent to the port of Suez in Egypt, his personable approach quickly made a connection with the locals.

He was just 23 years old and from the other side of the world, but he learned to speak Arabic during his posting to the 2nd Light Horse Regiment in the First World War. 

It’s a story Percy’s son, Peter, discovered decades later from strangers.

“I was in the pub one day talking to an old digger who knew my father and he said, ‘Your dad he learned a lot of Egyptian when he was over there and he could converse, and ask questions in Egyptian,’” he said.

A former serviceman himself,…