The AIF Project

Mention in Despatches

Military Medal (Not awarded)

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, 3rd Bn, Gallipoli, 31 May 1915. Wounded in action, 7 August 1915 (gun shot wound, head and neck); transferred by HS 'Ascania' to Egypt, 7 August 1915, and admitted to No. 1 Australian General Hospital, Cairo, 11 August 1915. Transferred to No. 2 Auxiliary Hospital, 13 August 1915; to Convalescent Camp, Helouan, 12 September 1915; to Base Details, 12 October 1915. Rejoined unit at Gallipoli, 3 November 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 29 December 1915 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Found guilty, 22 January 1916, of breaking camp and being absent from Tattoo, 9 January, to 1300, 16 January 1916: awarded 14 days' Field Punishment No. 2, and forfeited 21 days' pay. Found guilty, 12 February 1916, of breaking camp whilst undergoing punishment and remaining absent without leave from Tattoo, 30 January, to Tattoo, 3 February 1916: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No. 2, and forfeited 11 days' pay. Found guilty, 11 March 1916, of being absent from 0800, 28 February, to Reveille, 29 February 1916: awarded 3 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeited 5 days' pay.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 22 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 28 March 1916. Found guilty, 11 april 1916, of being absent without leave, 2030, 5 April, to 2100, 9 April 1916: awarded 14 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeited 19 days' pay.

Admitted to 1st Australian Field Ambulance, 3 June 1916 (dental); transferred to Divisional Rest Station, 7 June 1916; discharged to duty, 11 June 1916; rejoined unit, 12 June 1916. Found guilty, Belgium, 7 October 1916, of while on Active Service, being absent without leave, 1730, 25 September, to 0945, 3 October 1916: awarded 28 days' Field Punishment No. 2, and forfeited 37 days' pay.

Admitted to 2nd Australian Field Ambulance, 20 October 1916 (cut foot); transferred to No. 10 Stationary Hospital, St Omer, 20 October 1916; rejoined unit, 12 November 1916. Injury deemed not to have occurred whilst in performance of Military duty; of a trivial nature. Found guilty, 28 November 1916, of being absent without leave, 2030, 19 November, to 1030, 23 November 1916: awarded 20 days' Field Punishment No. 2, and forfeited 25 days' pay.

Promoted Temporary Corporal, 11 January 1917; Corporal, 26 February 1917; Temporary Sergeant, 10 March 1917. On leave to England, 10 April 1917; rejoined unit, 25 April 1917. Mentioned in Despatches, 9 April 1917. Promoted Sergeant, 18 August 1917. Detached to 1st Field Company Engineers as Instructor, 5 September 1917; rejoined Bn, 8 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 6 October 1917.