Victor Clarence Secombe

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

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.