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, Western Front

Taken on strength, 1st Field Company Engineers, Heliopolis, 18 December 1915.

Wounded in action, France, 23 July 1916 (gun shot wound, body, cheek), and admitted to 2nd Field Ambulance, and transferred to 3rd Canadian Casualty Clearing Station, and then to Ambulance Train No 16; admitted to 3rd Stationary Hospital, Rouen, 26 July 1916 (gun shot wound, chest and face); transferred to England, 26 July 1916, and admitted to 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, 27 July 1916 (gun shot wound: severe).

Proceeded overseas to France, 7 October 1916.

Found guilty, Base Depot, Etaples, 23 October 1916, of insolence to an NCO and breaking away from Working Party: forfeited 3 days' pay.

Rejoined unit, in the field, 28 November 1916.

Detached for duty at Hydraulic Pipe Pushing School, 2 March 1917; rejoined unit from detached duty, 6 March 1917.

Found guilty, 15 July 1917, of attempting to assault a Prisoner of War: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No 2.

Reported Missing in Action, 4 October 1917.

Now, 21 January 1918, reported Killed in Action, 4 October 1917.

Note on file, statement, 2155 Sapper R.C.W. BROWN, 1st Field Company Engineers, 30 December 1917: 'On on the morning of 4.10.17, I was with 1891 Private Curry and others taking cover in a shell crater between the first and second objectives about 10 a.m. Enemy were shelling heavily. One shell burst in the midst of us. There was about 12 in the party, I was the only one not hit, remainder were either killed or wounded. Private curry and the man in each side of him were killed. Private Curry was blown to pieces beyond identification. I was talking to him just before shell burst, and I am sure it exploded on top of Private Curry.'

Second statement by Brown (patient, 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital, Dartford), Red Cross File No 0860607, 22 November 1917: 'He was very badly mutilated so much so that it was impossible to effect a burial.'

Statement, 153 Lance corporal P.J. CARMICHAEL, 1st Field Company Engineers (patient, Red Maids Hospital, Bristol, England), 5 January 1918: ''This man was buried close to where he was killed on Oct. 4th on the Passchendaele Ridge. There was no funeral[;] it was a big fatal casualty list. And men were buried in a hurry. I did not actually see Curry killed or buried, but I know it happened ... No crosses were or could be erected at the actual place of burial but individual crosses with names were erected in a cemetery just outside the walls of Ypres. And a big cross in memory of Officers[,] N.C.O.'s and men who fell in the engagement.'

Statement, 6379 Sapper G.R. OSSENTON, 1st Field Company Engineers, 15 March 1918: 'I was told he was killed at Polygon Wood by a shell, I know he is buried at Polygon Wood and [a] cross erected on his grave. I painted the cross his grave.'