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: joined 4th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 6 January 1916. Transferred to 56th Bn, 16 February 1916. On Command Picquet, Zag-a-Zig, 4 March 1916. Admitted to 14th Field Ambulance, 16 March 1916 (vaccine reaction); rejoined Bn, 26 March 1916. Admitted to hospital, 30 March 1916; rejoined Bn, 8 April 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 19 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 29 June 1916.

Wounded in action, 20 July 1916 (gun shot wound, head); admitted to 3rd Canadian General Hospital, Boulogne, 21 July 1916. Transferred to England, 22 July 1916, and admitted to 1st Northern General Hospital, Newcastle, 23 July 1916. Transferred to 1st Australian Auxiliary Hospital, 22 August 1916; to No. 1 Command Depot, 25 August 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 20 October 1916; rejoined Bn, 3 November 1916.

On leave to England, 27 January 1917; rejoined Bn, 15 February 1917.

Wounded in action, 2 April 1917 (gun shot wound, thigh); admitted to 3rd Canadian General Hospital, Boulogne, 4 April 1917; transferred to England, 7 April 1917, and admitted to Kitchener Military Hospital, Brighton. Transferred to 1st Auxiliary Hospital, Harefield, 14 May 1917; discharged to furlough, 30 May 1917, to report to No. 3 Command Depot, Hurdcott, 15 June 1917. Proceeded overseas to France, 16 July 1917; rejoined Bn, 1 August 1917.

Killed in action, 25 September 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal