Victory Medal : Driver C T Black, 32 Battalion, AIF

Victory Medal. Impressed around edge with recipient's details.

678 Driver Charles Thomas Black, born at Hindmarsh, South Australia, was a 31 year old grocer when he enlisted in the AIF on 27 August 1915. After initial training he was assigned as a driver to the horse transport section of 32 Battalion at the beginning of October.

The battalion sailed from Adelaide aboard HMAT A13 Katuna on 11 November and arrived in Egypt in the middle of December. In June 1916 it transferred to France for service on the Western Front. As a transport driver, Black did not participate directly in the battle of Fromelles on 19 July, in which his battalion suffered 718 casualties, nearly 90 per cent of its fighting strength, or in the battle of Polygon Wood in 1917.

On 24 June 1918 Black was a member of a party sent to collect rations from the 8th Brigade's supply dump when he, and 15 others, were killed by a large bomb dropped by a German aircraft. Black was initially buried at the Vaux-sur-Somme Communal Cemetery Extension. In 1920 his body was exhumed and reinterred at the Villers Bretonneux Military Cemetery.