Military career
Venning was educated at Allhallows and Clifton College, followed by the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Venning was commissioned into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in 1901. He saw service with the West African Frontier Force from 1907 to 1910. He was restored to the establishment in September 1910 and promoted to captain on 26 October 1911.
Venning saw active service in the First World War, earning the Military Cross in the King's 1915 Birthday Honours. He was promoted to deputy assistant adjutant general at the General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force, and then to Assistant Adjutant General at the War Office.
After the war, Venning became an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley, and then, in 1922, was promoted to assistant adjutant general at the War Office. He was appointed assistant adjutant and quartermaster general at Aldershot Command in 1927 and deputy adjutant and quartermaster general at Eastern Command in India in 1929. In 1931 he became commanding officer of the 2nd (Rawalpindi) Infantry Brigade in India and then received a promotion to major general on 1 October 1933.
In 1934 he returned to the British Army as director of movements and quartering at the War Office. He was promoted to lieutenant general on 29 January 1938.
In the Second World War, Venning served as Quartermaster-General to the Forces from 2 February 1939 to 1942; in this capacity he had responsibility for the War Office Fleet, which he despatched to Dunkirk in 1940 to evacuate Allied forces. According to The Times, "It was due to the superb organization which [Venning] created and directed that the mobilization of the Regular Army in 1939, the embodiment of the Territorial Army and the embarkation of the expeditionary force were carried out with such astonishing smoothness."
After being promoted to general in July 1940, Venning retired from the army at the age of 60 and as a civilian served as Director General of the British Supply Mission in Washington, D.C., from 1942 to 1945.
