Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

01/01/1918

Place of Enlistment

Royal Military College, Duntroon ACT

Gender

Male

Date of Birth

04/01/1897

Place of Birth

Glen Wills, Victoria

Address (at enlistment)

Royal Military College, Duntroon ACT

School(s) Attended

Swift Creek State School (Victoria), St. Patrick's College (Ballarat, Victoria)

Occupation

Soldier

Next of Kin

Mrs. K. Secombe (mother), Hay Street, Perth, Western Australia

Final Rank

Lieutenant

Final Unit

15 Field Company Engineers AIF

Born near Omeo in Victoria in 1897, Secombe entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon in February 1915 and graduated at the end of 1917. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in a Special Draft of RMC graduates on 1 January 1918 and arrived in England in April 1918 and served with the 15th Field Company Engineers until the end of the war. Remaining in the army with the Royal Australian Engineers, he taught at Duntroon in the 1930s as an instructor in Military Engineering and served as president of the Canberra Racing Club. Secombe married Dorothea Hayes in Perth in 1929 and served in World War 2 with the 7th Division Engineers in charge of works in North Africa and the Middle East. He also served in Papua and New Guinea and after the war was Master General of Ordnance and retired in 1954 with the rank of Major General. Secombe died of cancer in Brisbane on 3 February 1962 and was buried in Toowong Cemetery. A son also graduated from Duntroon. There is no NAA file for this soldier.

Colonel J.E. Lee, 'Duntroon: The Royal Military College of Australia 1911-1946', 1952
Australian Dictionary of Biography online www.adb.anu.edu.au/biography/secombe-victor-clarence-11648/text20807, accessed online 11 June 2014
AWM First World War Unit Embarkation Rolls
AWM Collections Record : 116295
WWII Nominal Roll http://www.ww2roll.gov.au
West Australian - 24 May 1929
The Canberra Times - 10 December 1936, 22 December 1939