Portrait of 1200 Lance Corporal (LCpl) George Herbert Hampton Brisco, 28th Battalion. Born at ...

Portrait of 1200 Lance Corporal (LCpl) George Herbert Hampton Brisco, 28th Battalion. Born at Wandsworth, England, he was a member of the Territorial Force Richmond, Surrey, England. He emigrated to Australia at the age of 16 years and became a farmer of Babakine, WA, where he enlisted on 27 February 1915 and sailed from Fremantle with the 28th Battalion on HMAT Ascanius on 29 June 1915. He was killed in action on 29 July 1916, aged 21, at Pozieres in the Somme area of France and is commemorated on panel 112, of the Villers Bretonneux Memorial, France. This photograph is from an Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file. The Bureau, which commenced operation in October 1915, sought to identify, investigate and respond to enquiries made regarding the fate of Australian personnel. It investigated the majority of personnel posted as wounded and missing on official Army lists, as well as written enquiries from concerned relatives and friends. Approximately 32,000 individual case files were opened for Australian personnel who were reported as wounded or missing during the First World War. The Bureau employed searchers to operate both at the front and in Britain. They searched official lists of wounded and missing, interviewed comrades of missing soldiers in hospitals and wrote to men on active service. Altogether 400,000 responses were sent back to those who placed enquiries with the Bureau.