Darge Photographic Company collection of negatives

Studio portrait of 4956A Private (Pte) Herbert Edgar Benefield, cabinet maker, of Launceston, Tasmania. He enlisted in the 12th Battalion on 21 September 1915 and embarked aboard HMAT Ballarat on 18 February 1916 for Alexandria, Egypt. The Battalion relocated to France and the Western Front during August 1916. He was wounded in action on 9 January 1918 and was evacuated to England for treatment and furlough before rejoining his battalion in France on 26 June 1918. Pte Benefield was killed in action on 11 August 1918 at Lihons, France, aged 20 years. He has no known grave and his name is memorialised at 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.