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, Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 20 November 1915.

Allotted and proceeded to join 58th Bn, Zeitoun, 23 February 1916.

Taken on strength, 58th Bn, Tel el Kibir, 23 February 1916.

Admitted to 15th Field Ambulance (pyrexia of unknown origin), Tel el Kibir, 13 March 1916; transferred to No. 2 Australian Stationary Hospital, Tel el Kibir, 19 March 1916; transferred to No. 4 Hospital, Tel el Kibir, 24 March 1916; transferred 3rd Australian General Hospital, Abbassia, 24 March 1916; discharged to Overseas Base, Ghezireh, 27 March 1916; rejoined 58th Bn, Ferry Post, 1 April 1916.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, France, 17 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 23 June 1916.

Admitted to 88th Field Ambulance (bronchitis), France, 26 October 1916; transferred to 38th Casualty Clearing Station, France, 27 October 1916; admittted to 1st Canadian General Hospital, Etaples, 29 October 1916; admitted to No. 5 Convalescent Depot, Etaples, 5 November 1916; discharged to 5th Australian Divisional Base Depot, Etaples, 11 November 1916.

Rejoined 58th Bn, in the field, 7 December 1916.

Proceeded on leave to Britain, 14 June 1917; appointed lance corporal, 20 June 1917; rejoined 58th Bn from leave, 27 June 1917.

Admitted to 4th Stationary Hospital (scabies), Arques, 15 September 1917; rejoined 58th Bn from hospital, 21 September 1917.

Reported missing in action, Belgium, 29 September 1917.

Court of inquiry held in the field, 17 February 1918, pronounced fate as 'Killed in action, Belgium, 29 September 1917.