Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3851 Private (Pte) Jonathon Lionel Mills. A sleeper cutter from Essendon, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Mills embarked with the 12th Reinforcements, 8th Battalion from Adelaide on HMAT Ceramic on 23 November 1915. Later transferring to the 7th Battalion he was wounded in action and evacuated to England. Following his recovery he re-joined his battalion and was promoted to Lance Corporal. Subsequently posted as missing in action, a later court of enquiry determined that he had been killed in action near Polygon Wood, Flanders on 4 October 1917 aged 23. Following the Armistice his remains were recovered and re-interred in the Buttes New British Cemetery, Zonnebeke, Belgium. His brother 5137 Pte Ernest Gordon Mills, 57th Battalion, was killed in action on 27 October 1917. This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had a permit 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.