Studio portrait of 6530 Private (Pte) Charles Stuart Henderson, 16th Battalion. A farmer of ...

Studio portrait of 6530 Private (Pte) Charles Stuart Henderson, 16th Battalion. A farmer of Denmark, WA, he enlisted on 19 June 1916 and sailed from Fremantle, WA, on HMAT Suffolk with the 21st Reinforcements on 13 October 1916. He was killed in action on 30 September 1917, aged 27, when he, and six others in their dugout, came under heavy shelling at Polygon Wood, Belgium. He is commemorated at the Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele, Belgium. 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.