Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4245 Private (Pte) Christopher Fraser McRae. A labourer from Buchan, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte McRae embarked with the 13th Reinforcements, 5th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. He was later hospitalised twice firstly from mumps and secondly suffering from a hernia. After re-joining his battalion he was wounded in the face and the left eye and admitted to the 5th General Hospital. It was here where on 4 March 1917, aged 23, where he succumbed to his wounds and was buried in the St Sever Cemetery Extension, Haute-Normandie, France. 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.