Saturday Extra - Separate Stories Podcast

Vera Deakin was the youngest daughter of Australia's second Prime Minister Alfred Deakin. She was well educated, musically gifted and spent time in Germany and Hungary studying music in 1914. She was in London when Great Britain declared war on Germany and she was desperate to join the troops but was of the wrong gender. But the Great War did offer her a chance to change the course of her life and to leave a lasting legacy. She headed up the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry office, first in Cairo and later in London. Her reports are still used today to find missing soldiers.