Arc Tangent

Over the week­end, Aus­tralia lost our last liv­ing World War 2 VC — at the ripe old age of 90. His name was Edward ‘Ted’ Kenna, and I met him a cou­ple of times.

It would have been 1995, pos­si­bly 1996. I was 11, and we were liv­ing in Puck­a­pun­yal, the Army base smack-​dab in the mid­dle of Vic­to­ria. Pri­mar­ily used as a train­ing facil­ity, Pucka is lit­tle more than a mas­sive artillery range with an Army base and a mar­ried patch attached. It’s sur­rounded by elec­tric fences — not for secu­rity, but to keep the ‘roos from jump­ing out of the range into nearby farmlands.

Dad was run­ning 1^st Recruit Train­ing Bat­tal­ion, Echo Com­pany in Pucka. A big intake had meant that Kapooka didn’t have enough room, so E Com­pany was detached to Puck­a­pun­yal. The first march-​out called for a bit of pomp and cer­e­mony, and it turned out that E Com­pany was Ted Kenna’s unit way back when (or so I’m recall­ing — it’s been a while).

He came over to our place for din­ner, with his wife. They were both gen­uinely lovely peo­ple — just nice, real nice. Ted was happy to talk to me and my brother, and he was even okay with telling the story of how he got his Vic­to­ria Cross — though he cau­tioned us not to call him a hero, because he was just a bloke who was under pres­sure and lost his cool when he’d had enough. In fact, I seem to recall he called his actions ‘reck­less’ and ‘a lit­tle crazy’.

His unit was pinned down by Japan­ese machine gun fire, com­ing from two bunkers up a hill. Mates were dying all around him. They’d hun­kered down, most of them in cover, but there was no way they were mov­ing. Some­one had to assault the posi­tion and take those MGs out for any­one to be able to move, but it was clearly a sui­cide run.

Ted, as I recall him describ­ing it, snapped. He’d had enough. Under the great­est of duress, he went just a lit­tle bit mad. He stood up in full view of the Japan­ese gun­ners and began fir­ing his Bren gun at one of the two Japan­ese bunkers. From the hip. John Rambo, eat your heart out.

Bul­lets whizzed between his arms and his body as he emp­tied his entire mag­a­zine at them. With­out mov­ing, he shouted for a rifle, dis­card­ing his now-​empty Bren. With his first shot, he took out the Japan­ese gunner.Another Japan­ese sol­dier moved up to take over the gun, and again, Kenna fired a sin­gle shot and took the would-​be gun­ner down.

I vaguely remem­ber being told that at this point, some­one in his unit dragged him to the ground.

When asked to explain him­self, he said he’d just had enough. What struck me most about his story is that — like many other VC win­ners — he seemed repelled by the idea of ‘being a hero’; he was mod­est, per­haps to a fault. It’s amaz­ing to think that so many of us have these reserves of insan­ity, bravado, mad­ness, courage — what­ever you want to call it — that, if we’re pushed hard enough, well up within us, and leave us won­der­ing what the hell we were thinking.

RIP, Mr Kenna. I’ll never for­get your brav­ery (mad­ness?) and your humil­ity. He leaves behind a lovely wife and extended fam­ily, and my thoughts are with them all.