Studio portrait of Captain Douglas Raymond Montford, 98th Infantry, Indian Army. This photograph ...

Studio portrait of Captain Douglas Raymond Montford, 98th Infantry, Indian Army. This photograph was part of an Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau file relating to his cousin, 474 Trooper Harold Wright, 5th Light Horse Regiment, who died while a prisoner of war (POW) on 3 October 1918. Captain Montford was shot in the leg near Palestine and taken prisoner of war, dying from his wound in hospital on 30 March 1918. He is commemorated on panel 57, Jerusalem Memorial, Palestine. 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.