Pair of colour patches : Driver A C Carter, 18 Battery, 6 Field Artillery Brigade, AIF

Place Europe: Western Front
Accession Number REL32879
Collection type Heraldry
Object type Colour Patch
Physical description Cotton twill, Velveteen, Wool serge
Maker Unknown
Date made c 1917
Conflict First World War, 1914-1918
Description

Pair of rectangular colour patches of 6 Field Artillery Brigade, AIF, divided diagonally into quarters. The upper and lower quarters are dark blue. The left and right quarters are red. The patches are sewn to small rectangular pieces of the wearer's original service dress tunic.

History / Summary

These colour patches were worn 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.