David St Alban Dexter (8 January 1917 – 15 March 1992) was an Australian military historian, commando, diplomat and university administrator.

The 2/2nd Independent Company was sent to Portuguese Timor, where it waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese after they invaded the island in February 1942.

Shortly before the end of the war in August 1945, he assumed command of the 2/4th Commando Squadron with the rank of major.

His father was on active service at the time as an Army Church of England chaplain with the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF).

Dexter was there from 1930 to 1935, initially as a boarder on a scholarship for sons of the clergy, but as a day student in his final years.

[1][2] After matriculating from Geelong Grammar, Dexter took a job in a furniture business run by Maurice Arnold Nathan.

[6] Back in Australia, Dexter was reported missing, but contact with East Timor was restored in June, and his family was informed that he was alive and well.

The 2/2nd Independent Company was taken off by the Dutch destroyer HNLMS Tjerk Hiddes, and he returned to Darwin on 17 December.

[8] After hospital treatment for malaria, Dexter was seconded to the Allied Geographical Section in Brisbane on 8 January 1943 to help it prepare a terrain study of East Timor.

He rejoined the 2/2nd Independent Company at Canungra on 8 March, and on 16 June it embarked from Townsville on the MV Duntroon, and sailed to Port Moresby.

[3] That month he became engaged to Freda Doris Irene Harper, a teacher,[1][12] and they were married at St Mark's Church in Camberwell, Victoria, where his father was the minister, on 29 September.

[3] Dexter received an invitation to join the Department of External Affairs in Canberra from the departmental secretary, William Dunk.

Dexter dealt with important issues of the day like the establishment of the State of Israel and the Berlin airlift.

He was involved in the formulation of the Colombo Plan and developed foreign aid programs in conjunction with the South East Asia Treaty Organization and the United Nations.

Dexter consciously copied the methods of Charles Bean, the historian of the Great War, assembling documents in chronological order into six master diaries.

He wrote most of it while he was the first secretary of the Australian High Commission to Ceylon in Colombo, where he served under Roden Cutler from 1952 to 1955.

[13] He helped chairman of the commission, Sir Leslie Martin write a report into Australian universities, the recommendations of which were adopted.