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

Admitted to 15th General Hospital, Alexandria, 5 April 1915 (contusion, toe); rejoined unit at Gallipoli, 8 May 1915. Found guilty, 20 July 1915, of refusing to obey the order of an NCO: awarded 20 days' Field Punishment No. 2. Disembarked Alexandria, 7 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Admitted to No. 1 Casualty Clearing Station, Serapeum, 22 March 1916; transferred to No. 1 Australian Stationary Hospital, Ismailia, 22 March 1916; to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, Abbassia, 23 March 1916; discharged to duty, 1 April 1916. Total period of treatment for venereal disease: 11 days.

Found guilty of being absent without leave from Roll Call, 4 pm, 20 May 1916, until apprehended at Zag-a-Zig, 2 pm, 21 May 1916: awarded 1 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeiture of 3 day's pay. Found guilty, 27 May 1916, of being absent without leave, 5.30 am, 23 May, to 12 pm, 25 May 1916: awarded 14 days' Field Punishment No. 2, and forfeiture of 17 days' pay.

Embarked from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 21 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 30 June 1916. Found guilty, 18 July 1916, of hesitating to obey an order: awarded 7 days' confinement to camp.

Marched out to 58th Bn, 22 July 1916; taken on strength, 23 July 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 20 June 1917.

Killed in action, 25 September 1917.