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Victor Denne

Victor Denne.png

Victor Denne was born on North Bruny Island and saw considerable service at Gallipoli and on the Western Front.

Victor’s family settled as farmers on Bruny Island in the 1830s and created the settlement known as Dennes Point.

Victor was the son of D'Arcy Collicott and Gertrude Denne, of ‘Sunnyside’, North Bruny.

Victor was a farmer before enlisting on 20 April 1914. He embarked from Hobart on HMAT Geelong on 20 October 1914 with A Company, 12th Battalion, with the service number 131.  He participated in the first day of the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915. He was evacuated to Egypt in July 1915 with pneumonia. On 4 August 1915 he was promoted to Corporal. He returned to the Gallipoli on 24 August 1915, and remained there until he was evacuated to Malta with jaundice on 4 December 1915.

Corporal Denne was awarded a Military Medal for his actions at Mouquet Farm, in France, on 4-5 September 1916, when he continued to patrol the trench and manning a detached post in the face of bombardment and enemy attack. The award was gazetted on 9 December 1916.

On 20 September 1916, Victor Denne was promoted to Second Lieutenant.  While training to be an officer in Bristol, Second Lieutenant Denne met Winifred Powell. The couple married on 10 August 1917.

Second Lieutenant Denne was promoted to Lieutenant on 1 October 1917. He was wounded in action on 18 October 1917, and then wounded for a second time on 5 April 1918, and evacuated to London General Hospital, Wandsworth, where he died of tubercular meningitis, on 26 May 1918, at the age of 33.  His son Victor Edward D’Arcy Denne was born after his death, in England.

The Mercury newspaper reported on Lieutenant Denne’s death on 13 June 1918:

“Our Alonnah correspondent writes:

Yet another of Bruny's soldiers, Lieutenant Victor E. Denne, M.M., son of Councillor Darcy C. Denne, J.P. of North Bruny has made the supreme sacrifice, being the nineteenth Brunyite to do so out of 60 volunteers only a fraction less than 34 per cent.”

Victor Denne is commemorated at the Brookwood Military Cemetery, Pirbright, Surrey, England, United Kingdom. His name also appears on the war memorial at the Barnes Bay Cemetery, Bruny Island.

Acknowledgement

Bruny Island Historical Society