Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 3976 Private (Pte) Walter Lawrence Westwood. A labourer frim Westgarth, Victoria prior to enlistment, Pte Westwood embarked with the 12th Reinforcements, 6th Battalion from Melbourne on HMAT Ceramic on 23 January 1915. Later while serving in France he was admitted to hospital suffering from influenza. Following his recovery he re-joined his battalion and was wounded in the scalp and evacuated to England. He was still recovering when the Armistice was declared and he returned to Australia on 25 January 1919. During the Second World War he served with the 17th Garrison Battalion. 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.