VRC HONOURS VERA DEAKIN AND AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS ON ANZAC DAY
BY ANDREW LEMON
The heroic roles of Australian women at war have been honoured by the VRC at past Anzac Days. This year they pay tribute to a courageous woman named Vera Deakin. Who did anxious Australian families turn to when they needed up-to-date information about soldiers, sailors or airmen serving abroad in the First and Second World War? Who could help them get news of loved ones taken prisoner or reported as missing in action? Who would scour the hospitals or hunt down eyewitness accounts of battles in the quest for honest news? The answer was the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service. Originally an offshoot of British Red Cross, the enquiry service began its work in 1915, early in the First World War. From a makeshift base first in Cairo, then in London, this non-government organisation with a tiny, dedicated staff pursued tens of thousands of individual enquiries, and wrote thousands of personal letters home to worried relatives during that war alone. It extended care to the sick and wounded, and organised entertainment and companionship for lonely Australian servicemen on leave. It owed its success to the character of a young Australian woman – Vera Deakin. At past Anzac Day race meetings at Flemington, the VRC has not forgotten the heroic role of women in war. “The Nurses’ Stakes” was a fixture on the card from the time of the first VRC Anzac Day races in 1961. In later years, the courageous British nurse Edith Cavell and the New Zealand born operative in the French Resistance, Nancy Wake (“The White Mouse”) have been honoured with Anzac Day races in their name.
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