Medal. He was promoted to major on 15 January 1937, still with the same regiment, and in the same year was awarded the King George VI Coronation Medal. On 1 July 1939, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed to command the 18th Light Horse (Machine Gun) Regiment. World War II Blackburn stopped practising law in 1940, and on 20 June was appointed to raise and command the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion, part of the Second Australian Imperial Force raised for service overseas during World War II. He was one of only three Australian World War I VC recipients to volunteer for overseas service in World War II. Eleven of the officers selected by Blackburn for his new unit were former officers of the 18th Light Horse (Machine Gun) Regiment, including the battalion second-in-command, Major Sid Reed, who was to prove valuable in moderating Blackburn's temper at times. The unit was raised in four different states; headquarters and A Company in South Australia, B Company in Victoria, C Company in Tasmania and D Company in Western Australia. It concentrated in Adelaide on 31 October, after which Blackburn moulded the separately raised companies into one organisation. Multi-day route marches featured strongly in their training; Blackburn invariably marched at the front of his battalion. After undergoing training, the battalion entrained for Sydney where it embarked on on 10 April 1941. The battalion sailed for the Middle East via Colombo, where they had ten days' leave, and disembarked in Egypt on 14 May. Upon arrival, the battalion was assigned to the 7th Division in Palestine, where it underwent further training at a camp just north of Gaza. Syria–Lebanon campaign In mid-June, the battalion was committed to the Syria–Lebanon campaign against the Vichy French in the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. Due to the involvement of Vichy French and Free French troops on opposite sides, the campaign was politically sensitive and as a result of heavy censorship not widely reported in Australia at the time; the nature of the fighting, where it was reported, was also played down as the Vichy forces outnumbered the Allies and were also better equipped. The Allied plan involved four axes of attack, with the 7th Division committed mainly to the coastal drive on Beirut in Lebanon and the central thrusts towards Damascus in Syria. Blackburn