Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio group portrait of three soldiers: 2017 Pte Allan James Eldridge, of Geelong, Victoria (probably left); 2059 Private (Pte) Ernest Charles Hopkinson, of Melbourne, Victoria (originally of Hertfordshire, England) (probably middle); 1983 Pte Justin Hercules Breguet, of Geelong (right). Pte Hopkinson enlisted on 6 July 1915, Pte Eldridge on 23 July 1915 and Pte Breguet on 28 July 1915. All three soldiers were aged eighteen years when they embarked together aboard HMAT Ballarat in Melbourne on 18 February 1916 as members of the 3rd Reinforcements, 29th Battalion. Pte Hopkinson was discharged on 7 October 1919. Lance Corporal Eldridge returned to Australia as a member of the 31st Battalion on 18 July 1919. Pte Breguet was killed in action on 19 July 1916 during the Battle of Fromelles. After the war his grave could not be located and he was commemorated on the VC Corner Australian Cemetery Memorial, Fromelles, France. In 2008 a burial ground was located at nearby Pheasant Wood containing the bodies of 250 British and Australian soldiers including Pte Breguet. All of the remains were reburied in the newly created Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery. At the time of the official dedication of the new cemetery on 19 July 2010, ninety-six of the Australians had been identified through a combination of anthropological, archaeological, historical and DNA information. Work is continuing on identifying the other remains relocated from the burial ground and buried in the new cemetery as unknown soldiers. Pte Breguet has subsequently been identified in May 2016. 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.