Badge belt : Driver A C Carter, 18 Battery, 6 Field Artillery Brigade, AIF

Places
Accession Number REL32881
Collection type Heraldry
Object type Heraldry
Physical description Brass, Copper, Leather, White metal
Maker Carter, Arthur Charles
Date made c 1915-1917
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Description

Leather money belt decorated with French and Egyptian coins, British, French, New Zealand, Australian and German badges and buttons, a shrapnel ball and pieces of shell splinter, the driving band from a shell and a small fork.

History / Summary

This money belt was decorated by 8665 Driver Arthur Charles Carter. A 23 year old labourer from the Indigo valley area near Chiltern, Vic, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 19 October 1915. He joined 6 Field Artillery Brigade and sailed with the 1st Reinforcements aboard HMAT Persic on 22 November 1915. Carter was attached to 18 Battery, serving for a few months in Egypt and then, from March 1916, on the Western Front. His time there included service on the Somme, at Pozieres, Bois Grenier, Ploegsteert and Ypres. On the last day of 1916 was admitted to hospital in France and was sent to England three weeks later suffering 'nervous shock'. After six months in an English hospital he boarded a ship for Australia, sailing on 22 July 1917. He was discharged on 29 October as medically unfit, diagnosed with shell shock.