Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 6838 Private (Pte) Henry Howard Whitfield, 5th Battalion from Murrayville, Victoria. A 36 year old auctioneer prior to enlisting on 29 August 1916, he embarked for overseas with the 22nd Reinforcements from Melbourne on 25 October 1916 aboard HMAT Ulysses. Following further training in England, he arrived in France in March 1917 and went on to also serve in Belgium where he was killed in action on 4 October 1917. Pte Whitfield was posthumously awarded a Military Medal (MM) for great courage during operations east of Ypres, Belgium between 20 and 23 September 1917. He is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres with others who have no known grave. 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.