Studio portrait of 1731 Lance Corporal Charles John Cornall, 4th Battalion. A schoolmaster of the ...

Studio portrait of 1731 Lance Corporal Charles John Cornall, 4th Battalion. A schoolmaster of the Glenn Innes Grammar School (originally of Gravesend, Kent, England), he enlisted on 18 January 1915, sailing from Sydney on HMAT Shropshire with the 4th Reinforcements on 17 March 1915. He was killed in action between the 6th and 9th of August 1915, aged 33 and is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial, Gallipoli Peninsula. 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.