Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3644 Private (Pte) Bernard Francis Wilson. A labourer from Flinders, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Wilson embarked with the 8th Reinforcements, 24th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Afric on 5 January 1916. He later transferred to the 57th Battalion and then the 59th Battalion. Subsequently posted as missing in action a later court of enquiry determined that he and another soldier had been killed when one of their own shells exploded prematurely. He was presumed buried in no-man’s-land and, following the Armistice, his remains were recovered and re-interred in the Ration Farm Military Cemetery, Lille, 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.