Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 5801 Private (Pte) Percy John Wadman-Smith, 6th Battalion and two unidentified soldiers (positions unknown). A gas engineer from Clunes, Victoria and originally from Tadcaster, England, Pte Wadman-Smith embarked with the 18th Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Ayrshire on 3 July 1916. Later serving in France with the 59th and 66th Battalions, he returned to Australia on 19 February 1919. 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.