... ...Vera Deakin......Photograph: Vera Deakin...Many of the key personnel in the London office of the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Bureau were women from Victoria, trusted friends and acquaintances of Vera Deakin. There was Winifred Johnson, who travelled to Cairo with Vera Deakin at the outset, Lillian Whybrow from Melbourne and later, Miss Brotherton from Castlemaine.
...The work continued after the declaration of Armistice in 1918, as many soldiers still remained classified as ‘missing in action’ when the war ended. Pictured here is Vera Deakin, far right, in the London Bureau in 1919.
The Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau would reopen at the outbreak of World War 2, helmed again by Vera Deakin, now using her married title Lady White.
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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.
