The original grave of 211 Private (Pte) Thomas Orton, 2nd Division Salvage Company. Pte Orton, a ...

The original grave of 211 Private (Pte) Thomas Orton, 2nd Division Salvage Company. Pte Orton, a grocer of California Gully, Bendigo, Victoria, who enlisted on 27 February 1915 and sailed from Melbourne on HMAT Euripides on 10 May 1915 as part of A Company. On 16 September 1917, aged 37, he was wounded in an ammunition explosion in a trench at Hell Fire Corner and died in hospital later that day. He was reburied at The Huts Cemetery, Dickebusch, 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.