Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 1812 Private (Pte) Allan Archibald Fletcher, 14th Battalion. A packer from Collingwood, Vic prior to enlistment, Pte Fletcher embarked with the 2nd Reinforcements from Melbourne on HMAT Demosthenes on 29 October 1915. On 18 September 1918 he was killed in action, aged 30, at Mont St Quentin and is buried in the Bellicourt British Cemetery, France. He was one of four brothers who served with the AIF. 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.