Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Informal portrait probably of 6592 Private (Pte) Robert Jeadon Smith, 5th Battalion. A farmer and blacksmith of Allambee South, near Mirboo North in South Gippsland, Victoria, he enlisted on 1 March 1916 aged 21 years. He was attached to the 10th Field Company, Engineers, and in April 1916 he transferred to the Service Corps reinforcements. In August 1916, at Broadmeadows, Victoria, he was transferred to the 21st Reinforcements of the 5th Battalion, and embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Nestor (A71) on 2 October 1916. After training in England, Robert arrived in France in February 1917, joining the 5th Battalion at the front at the Hindenburg Line and later at Bullecourt. On 20 September 1917 the battalion was in the main attacking force on the first day of the battle of Menin Road, (Third Battle of Ypres), in Belgium. The battalion achieved its objective about 1km from the start line within a few hours and dug in to defend the line. Later that day, as a member of 15 Platoon D Company, Robert was manning a Lewis machine gun with Corporal William Mazelin near Black Watch Corner in front of Polygon Wood and about 250 yards behind the front line then occupied by 7th and 8th Battalions. They were defending against an expected German counter attack when a bursting shell killed them both. They were buried on the battlefield alongside others of the same battalion killed in action. Both Robert and Corporal Mazelin have no known grave and they are commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Belgium. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers' notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative.