Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4744 Private (Pte) William Edmund Buckley, 14th Battalion. A clerk from Merino, Victoria, prior to enlistment on 16 August 1915 he embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Anchises on 14 March 1916 for Egypt. He was transferred to the 46th Battalion on 24 May 1916 and the unit relocated to the Western Front, France, during June 1916. Pte Buckley was wounded in action in France on 13 August 1916 and was evacuated to England for treatment. He did not return to the front but served for the remainder of the war in AIF Headquarters, London, before being repatriated to Australia for discharge on 15 May 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.