 He had a degree of independence afforded by the Joint Finance Committee of St John Ambulance and the Red Cross, who gave Ware his own operating budget for three-month periods.Ware was struck by the lack of an official mechanism for managing the graves of those killed and following British defeats at Mons and Le Cateau in September, Ware's unit began sharing information with Lord Robert Cecil, the head of the Red Cross's Wounded and Missing Department.According to an Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) report, the original object of the unit was to "search for British wounded and missing in the district which had been overrun by the Germans during the retreat from Mons, and to convey them back to the British lines or to a British base".