The AIF Project

'My husband was one of the original Anzac; was wounded three times, invalided home. When well, re-enlisted, sailed 3rd November, 1916 and paid the supreme sacrifice the following October.' Details from Wife.

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: embarked from Sydney, 3 November 1916; disembarked Plymouth, 9 January 1917. (Admitted to ship's hospital at sea, 4 November; discharged, 2 January 1917.) Admitted to Fargo Military Hospital, Larkhill, 30 January 1917 (influenza); transferred to Sutton Veny Military Hospital, 6 February 1917 (gastritis). Found guilty, 9 April 1917, of being absent without leave from midnight, 9 April, to 9 pm,12 April 1917: awarded 3 days confined to camp and forfeited total 9 days' pay. Proceeded overseas to France, 3 May 1917; joined 21st Bn, 9 May 1917.

Admitted to 14th Field Ambulance, 6 June 1917 (epileptic); transferred to 56th Casualty Clearing Station, 9 June 1917; to 5th General Hospital, Rouen, 13 June 1917; to 2nd Convalescent Depot, 19 June 1917. Found guilty, 21 June 1917, of overstaying leave from 9 pm, 21 June, to 9.45 pm, 23 June 1917: awarded 1 days' Field Punishment No. 2, and forfeited 24 days' pay. Marched in to 2nd australian Division Base Depot, Havre, 25 August 1917. Found guilty, 28 August 1917, of (1) drunkenness, 28 August; (2) being absent without leave from 9.30 pm, 28 August, until apprehended by MP 9.45 pm, 28 August 1917: awarded forfeiture of 7 days' pay. Rejoined 21st Bn, 1 September 1917.

Reported missing in action, Belgium, 9 October 1917; confirmed killed in action, 9 October 1917. Statement by 7322 Pte D'A. SUTTON, 4 February 1918: 'I was in the same Lewis Gun team as Private Evans C.and when out in an advanced position near Daisy Wood on the 8th of October 1917, I left the position to go back to the support line for panniers, and when I returned, the gun and team were blown up. I saw five dead bodies, but recognised none, but I am sure that they were the team . . . '

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