Paul Kenna

Born at Oakfield House, in the Everton district of Liverpool, to a wealthy family of stockbrokers descended from Irish nobility from Couny Meath, Paul Kenna was first and foremost a career soldier. After attending the Sandhurst Military Academy and initially commissioned into the 2nd West India Regiment, he served in some of the most famous campaigns of the time. He served on India’s Northwest Frontier, in Somalia, in the Mahdist Wars in the Sudan and in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer conflicts. For his effort in rescuing a fellow officer during the Battle of Ondurman in the Sudan he was awarded the Victoria Cross, the British Empire’s highest military honour. Unsurprisingly for a cavalryman he was an expert horseman but his skills on horseback were legendary even amongst his own peers. A polo player of the top rank, he won approximately 300 races as a jockey in both flat and steeplechase racing and was a member of the British Olympic team at both show jumping and three day eventing at the Stockholm Games of 1912. His Olympic performances were not memorable, a fact he blamed on the haphazard preparation of the British team. In October 1915 Kenna by then a Brigadier General with the 21st Lancers regiment took part in the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the coast of Turkey. Whilst on one of his regular inspections of the front lines at Chocolate Hill, he was struck by a sniper’s bullet and fatally wounded.