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

Embarked Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 3 September 1915.

Admitted to 3rd Field Ambulance, 14 September 1915, and then to 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station (dysentery: mild); to Hospital Ship, 15 September 1915, and transferred to 3rd Auxiliary Hospital, Helipolis, 19 September 1915; to Ras el Tin Convalescent Home, Alexandria, 28 September 1915; discharged to Base, 15 November 1915.

Admitted to 2nd Australian General Hospital, Ghezireh, 30 December 1915 (influenza); discharged to duty, 26 January 1916; rejoined unit, Tel el Kebir, 27 January 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 16 March 1916.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 1 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 9 June 1916.

Promoted Temporary 2nd Corporal, 8 August 1916.

Promoted Substantive 2nd Corporal, 28 November 1916.

On leave in United Kingdom (date of commencement not recorded).

Admitted to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, Bulford, while on leave, 3 January 1917; discharged, 13 February 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 42 days.

Marched in to No 1 Command Depot, 14 February 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 8 April 1917; rejoined unit, in the field, 19 April 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 24 October 1917.