Victor Secombe

Lieutenant General Victor Clarence Secombe CB, CBE (1897–1962) was a general officer of the Australian army

Secombe was born on 9 January 1897 at Glen Wills near Omeo, Victoria.

His first military service was with the 5th Australian Division in 1919, where he served as adjutant to the divisional engineers; he joined the Staff Corps in 1920, and commanded a variety of engineering units through the 1920s. In the 1930s, he served as an aide-de-camp to various provincial governors, before a spell teaching at the Royal Military College, Duntroon.

With the outbreak of the Second World War he took up command of the engineering elements of 7th Australian Division in 1940. In May 1941, he became the assistant divisional adjutant and quartermaster-general for the Syria-Lebanon campaign; in 1943, he took up the same duty for the Australian forces fighting in the New Guinea campaign, and in October 1944 for the advanced base at Hollandia, where he remained until the end of the war.

Following the Japanese surrender he was appointed the deputy quartermaster-general for the Army, and in 1946 became the Master-General of Ordnance and then the Engineer in Chief of the General Staff.

Secombe retired from the army on 4 April 1954 as an honorary lieutenant general. In 1955 he was appointed C.B. and colonel commandant of the R.A.E. After breeding Herefords on a 10,000 acre (4047 ha) property near Gatton, Queensland, he bought a small orchard at Kenmore. He died of cancer on 3 February 1962 in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, South Brisbane, and was buried in Toowong Cemetery. His wife, and their daughter and elder son survived him; their younger son, also a graduate of Duntroon, predeceased him.