... Vera Deakin...Photograph: Vera Deakin...Vera Deakin, young daughter of a former Australian Prime Minister, became a humanitarian pioneer as secretary of the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau in the First World War.....
The operational head, known as the secretary, of the Cairo and then the London bureau was a remarkable young woman called Vera Deakin, who was the daughter of the ex-prime minister Alfred Deakin. ...
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.
