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

Taken on strength, 26th Bn, Gallipoli, 12 October 1915. Admitted to 16th Casualty Clearing Station, 16 October 1915 (measles), and transferred to Mudros. Admitted to 21st General Hospital, Alexandria, 20 October 1915, and thence to Ras el Tin Convalescent Home. transferred to Mustapha Base, 27 December 1915; to Australian Overseas Base, Cairo, 28 December 1915; rejoined 26th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 25 January 1916. Found guilty of being drunk in Cairo, 19 January 1916; of creating a disturbance; and of using obscene language to the Officer of the Picquet: awarded 28 days' detention. Rejoined Bn, Ismailia, 21 February 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 15 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 21 March 1916. Found guilty, 25 September 1916, of neglecting to obey an order: awarded 72 hours' Field Punishment No. 2.

Admitted to 5th Australian Field Ambulance, 20 November 1916 (sore feet), and transferred to 1st Anzac MD Station. Discharged to duty, 23 November 1916; rejoined Bn, 25 November 1916.

Admitted to 51st General Hospital, Etaples, 23 December 1916 (venereal disease); discharged to Base Depot, 14 February 1917; rejoined Bn, 7 March 1917.

Found guilty, Field General Court Martial, 15 March 1917, of 'neglect to the prejudice of good order and Military discipline in when instructing in the mechanism of Lewis Guns negligently fired the gun thereby wounding No. 5443 Pte Harper G.H.': awarded forfeiture of 1 day's pay.

Admitted to 4th Field Ambulance, 10 May 1917 (trench fever); transferred to 9th Casualty Clearing Station, 12 May 1917;to 6th General Hospital, Rouen, 23 May 1917; discharged to Base Depot, 6 July 1917; rejoined Bn, 31 July 1917. On leave to England, 7 August 1917; rejoined unit from leave, 19 August 1917.

Killed in action, 4 October 1917.