With the Aid of the Red Cross
With the Aid of the Red Cross
Veterans returning in wheelchairs and with missing limbs gave Australians at home their first sight of the true cost of modern warfare.
Year: 1916
Length: 2:12
Source: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
Catalogue Reference: NFSA title: 14050
Location: Australia
Tags: Red Cross, newsreel, hospitals, rehabilitation
Subject: Red Cross, newsreel, hospitals, rehabilitation
As thousands of wounded and shell-shocked soldiers returned from the battlefields, hospitals and rehabilitation centres for them were set up all over Australia.
The Australian Red Cross, formed in 1914, took a leading role in caring for returned servicemen. This 1916 newsreel shows the Red Cross nurses distributing tobacco to ex-servicemen, including one with a heavily bandaged face, one in a hand-cranked wheelchair, and another in an adapted bed-wheelchair. Two amputees are then issued with artificial limbs. These look primitive by modern standards but at the time they were at the leading edge of medical technology.
With the Aid of the Red Cross
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Australia
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0:00
Soldiers receiving good from Red Cross tables
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0:32
A soldier with crutches receives a prosthetic leg
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1:25
A soldier tests his prosthetic arm and hand