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

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 30 August 1915.

Admitted to 13th Casualty Clearing Station, 17 October 1915 (jaundice); transferred by HS 'Dunluce Castle' to Alexandria and admitted to 1st Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 23 December 1915; rejoined unit, Ghezirah, 4 January 1916.

Admitted to 3rd Australian General Hospital, Abbassia, 5 May 1916; discharged to School of Instruction, 12 May 1916. Admitted to Derin Hospital, Abbassia, 13 May 1916 (venereal disease); discharged to 2nd Division Details Depot, Tel el Kebir, 20 June 1916; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 39 days.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 20 August 1916; taken on strength, 22nd Bn, 5 October 1916. Admitted to 1st General Hospital Etratat, 11 November 1916 (trench feet); rejoined Bn, 9 January 1917.

Wounded in action, 3 May 1917 (gun shot wound, face). Admitted to 5th General Hospital, Rouen, 4 May 1917. Transferred to England, 17 May 1917; admitted to 1st Southern General Hospital, Strickby, Birmingham, 18 May 1917. Granted furlough, 21 May 1917, to report to Perham Downs, 5 June 1917. Proceeded overseas to France, 20 June 1917; rejoined unit, 9 July 1917.

Killed in action, 4 October 1917