The AIF Project

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Returned to Gallipoli from hospital, 7 November 1915 (no further details recorded). Disembarked Alexandria from Mudros, 7 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 19 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 26 March 1916. Take part in a raid on the enemy's trenches at night, 29-30 June 1916.

Wounded in action, 5 August 1916 (gun shot wound, right arm and back), and admitted to 4th Australian Field Ambulance; transferred to 3rd Casualty Clearing Station, 6 August 1916; to St John's Field Ambulance, 6 August 1916; to England, 12 August 1916, and admitted same day to Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, 12 August 1916. Transferred to Woodcote Park Convalescent Hospital, Epsom, 21 September 1916; discharged to No 2 Command Depot, Weymouth. Proceeded overseas to France, 28 February 1917; marched in to 2nd Australian Division base Depot, Etaples, 1 March 1917. Admitted to 18th General Hospital, Camiers, 3 March 1917 (mumps); discharged to Base Details, 21 March 1917; rejoined unit, 5 April 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 1 June 1917; Temporary Corporal, 9 August 1917; Corporal, 1 September 1917.

Reported missing in action, 9 October 1917; Court of Enquiry subsequently confirmed fate as killed in action.