Informal portrait of 518 Private Alexander John (Alec) McIntyre, B Company, 22nd Battalion. Pte ...

Informal portrait of 518 Private Alexander John (Alec) McIntyre, B Company, 22nd Battalion. Pte McIntyre worked as a miner prior to enlisting in Casterton, Victoria, on 12 March 1915 and sailed from Melbourne on HMAT Ulysses on 10 May 1915. He was killed in action, aged 24, at Enville on the Somme, on 18 August 1918. He is commemorated on panel 97, Villers Bretonneux, 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.