Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 2605 Private (Pte) Harold Edwin Halse, 8th Battalion. A carpenter from Broken Hill, NSW prior to enlistment, Pte Halse embarked with the 8th Reinforcements from Melbourne on SS Makarini on 15 September 1915. Whilst serving in France, he was killed in action at Pozieres on 18 August 1916, aged 26 and, having no known grave, is commemorated on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial. 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. See also DASEY1223.