Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Group portrait of 3506 Private (Pte) Percy Alfred Edwards and two unidentified soldiers (position unknown). A labourer from Bendigo, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Edwards embarked with the 8th Reinforcements, 21st Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915. He later transferred to the 57th Battalion and was admitted to hospital after being wounded in the left eye. On 8 August 1918 he was killed in action near Harbonnieres and buried in the vicinity. Following the Armistice his remains were recovered and re-interred in the Heath Cemetery, Harbonnieres, 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.