Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 16479 Driver (Dvr) William Charles Semmel, 15th Field Artillery Brigade (FAB) and an unidentified soldier (positions unknown). A clerk from Echuca East, Victoria prior to enlistment, Dvr Semmel embarked with the 3rd Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Berrima on 4 July 1916. He later joined the 6th FAB and was re-mustered as a Gunner. Following his transfer to the 106th Howitzer Battery he was wounded in action and, on 18 August 1918, aged 23, he succumbed to his wounds and was buried in the British Chalk Pit Cemetery. His remains were later exhumed and reburied in the Villers-Bretonneux Cemetery, France. 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.