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

Taken on strength, 12th Bn, Gallipoli, 16 June 1915.

Admitted to 2nd Field Ambulance, 11 August 1915 (diarrhoea), and transferred to 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Mudros; to 3rd Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 20 August 1915 (dysentery); to 1st General Hospital, 20 August 1915; to 1st Australian General Hospital, 29 September 1915; discharged to duty, 2 October 1915; rejoined Bn, Gallipoli, 25 October 1915.

Admitted to 3rd Field Ambulance, 20 December 1915 (mumps); transferred to 3rd Australian General Hospital, Mudros, 20 December 1915; discharged, 28 December 1915; rejoined Bn, 28 December 1915.

Disembarked Alexandria, 6 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 29 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 5 April 1916.

Tried by Field General Court Martial, 6 April 1916: when on Active Service, using insubordinate language to his superior Officer; found guilty; awarded 56 days' Field Punishment No 2; period under arrest awaiting trial: 19 days; total forfeiture of pay: 75 days.

Wounded in action, 24 July 1916 gun shot wound, right arm); admitted to 3rd Casualty Clearing station, 25 July 1916; transferred to Ambulance train, 25 July 1916, and admitted to 12th General Hospital, Rouen, 26 July 1916; transferred to England, 30 July 1916, and admitted to 1st Southern General Hospital, Dudley, Birmingham, 1 August 1916.

Marched in to Drafting Depot, Perham Downs, 23 February 1917.

Admitted to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, Bulford, 20 March 1917; discharged to duty, 6 June 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 79 days.

Proceeded overseas to France, 15 June 1917; rejoined Bn, in the field, 8 July 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 28 December 1917.