War Memorial
Gunner Victor Henry Pitfield, service number 3425, served with the 8th Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery during the First World War. He gave his age as 31 when he died, having enlisted at Hunters Hill in New South Wales. He left Sydney aboard HMAT Port Lincoln on 13 October 1915.
His war was marked by serious injury. In November 1916 he was treated at St. Anslems V.A.D. hospital in Shorncliffe for severe shrapnel wounds to the back and abdominal wall. Two years later, on 30 September 1918, he was admitted to hospital in Rouen, France, after being shot, the bullet causing a compound fracture of the femur. He died of these wounds on 3 October 1918 and was buried at Bois Guillame Communal Cemetery Extension in Seine-Maritime.
Victor was the son of Jacob Henry and Sophia Pitfield of Jessops, Penshurst, Kent, and husband of Lily, who lived at Station Street, Guildford, New South Wales. The 1901 census shows him, aged 14, at Palmer's Farm, Penshurst, with his parents, sister and grandfather; his father farmed dairy cattle there on his own account.
He is remembered on the war memorials at Chiddingstone Causeway, Penshurst and Edenbridge Hospital, and at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.