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

Joined 1st Bn at Gallipoli, 4 November 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 28 December 1915 (general Gallipoli evacuation). Found guilty, 1 January 1916, of being absent from camp, 9.30-10 pm, 31 December 1915: awarded 21 days' Field Punishment no. 2. Found guilty, 31 January 1916, of breaking camp and being absent without leave, 8.30 am-10 pm, 29 January 1916: awarded 14 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeiture of 1 day's pay.

Transferred to 53rd Bn, 13 February 1916. Admitted to 8th Australian Field Ambulance, Ismailia, 15 May 1916 (septic finger); transferred to Acting No. 2 Casualty Clearing Station, 18 May 1916; to No. 1 Australian Stationary Hospital, 23 May 1916 (old bullet wound, left thigh).

Embarked from Alexandria, 29 July 1916; disembarked Southampton (via Marseilles), 9 August 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 31 August 1916. Rejoined 53rd Bn, 30 September 1916.

Proceeded on special leave to England, 2 March 1917; rejoined Bn, 17 March 1917. Appointed Lance Corporal, 28 May 1917. Detached to 4th Division Gas School, 3 June 1917; rejoined unit, 7 June 1917. Reverted to Private at own request, 27 August 1917.

Killed in action, 26 September 1917. .