... ...Stanley Addison: Red Cross Searcher...By the end of 1917, he collected 6,387 reports about wounded and missing men.
Pictured here are Red Cross searchers at Le Toquet near a military hospital in France. Stanley Addison is seated behind the steering wheel. The car was his own car ‘Gladys’, which he brought to France at his own expense.
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When WW1 brought Australians face to face with mass death, a Red Cross Information Bureau and post-war graves workers laboured to help families grieve for the missing.
The unprecedented death toll of the First World War generated a burden of grief. Particularly disturbing was the vast number of dead who were “missing” - their bodies never found.
This film and series of photo essays explores two unsung humanitarian responses to the crisis of the missing of World War 1 – the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau and the post-war work of the Australian Graves Detachment and Graves Services. It tells of a remarkable group of men and women, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, who laboured to provide comfort and connection to grieving families in distant Australia.
