The AIF Project

Mention in Despatches

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

Joined 6th Bn at Gallipoli, 10 July 1915. Appointed Corporal, 5 August 1915. Admitted to 16th Stationary Hospital, Mudros, 28 July 1915 (diarrhoea). transferred to Malta, and admitted to Military Hospital, Hamrun, 5 August 1915 (dysentery). Transferred to England, 26 August 1915; admitted to King George Hospital, Stamford Street, London, 3 September 1915. Embarked from England to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, 21 February 1916; disembarked Alexandria, 5 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 25 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 30 March 1916. Appointed Lance Sergeant, 23 May 1916.

Wounded in action, 20 August 1916 (shell splinter, face); admitted to No. 1 Canadian General Hospital, Etaples, 24 August 1916; transferred to 6th Convalescent Depot, 5 September 1916; to 1st Australian Division Base Depot, 7 September 1916. Admitted to 24th General Hospital, 18 September 1916 (dysentery, slight); transferred to England, 12 October 1916, and admitted to 1st Southern General Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham (dysentery, severe). Transferred to The Manor Hospital, London, 25 January 1917. Discharged on furlough, 25 January 1917, to report to No. 1 Command Depot, Perham Downs, 9 February 1917. Proceeded overseas to France, 5 April 1917; rejoined 6th Bn, 23 May 1917. Promoted Sergeant, 26 May 1917.

Admitted to 1st Australian Field Ambulance, 5 July 1917 (pyrexia; unknown origin); transferred to Divisional Rest Station, 5 July 1917; discharged and rejoined unit, 13 July 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.