... ...Stanley Addison: Red Cross Searcher......Photograph: Stanley Addison in uniform...Red Cross Commissioners in Cairo and London constantly wrote to Lady Helen Munro Ferguson to send more searchers. They named Stanley Addison as an example of the kind of man ‘most suitable’ for the work.
Stanley Addison, a laboratory assistant to Professor William Henry Bragg of Adelaide University, was a quietly spoken and introspective man who joined the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau as a searcher in 1915. ...
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.
