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

Joined 7th Bn at Gallipoli, 30 April 1915. Admitted to 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station, 6 August 1915 (dysentery); transferred to HS 'Sicilia', 6 August 1915; transferred to Alexandria, 12 August 1915; to No 2 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 26 August 1915; discharged to duty, 24 September 1915. Rejoined Bn at Gallipoli, 29 November 1915. Disembarked Alexandria from Lemnos, 7 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Found guilty, Tel el Kebir, 25 January 1916, of failing to rise for Reveille: awarded 2 days' Field Punishment No 2. Found guilty, Serapeum, 21 February 1916, of refusing to obey the order of an NCO: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No 2.

Transferred to and taken on strength of 59th Bn, 24 February 1916.

Admitted to 15th Australian Field Ambulance, Tel el Kebir, 4 March 1916; transferred same day to 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital (venereal disease warts); transferred by Hospital Train to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, Abbassia, 5 March 1916; discharged, 15 March 1916; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 12 days. Marched out from Overseas Base to rejoin unit, 25 March 1916.

Alloted to 15th Infantry Brigade, 19 April 1916. Taken on strength, 57th Bn, Hog's Back, 20 April 1916.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 17 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 23 June 1916.

Missing in action, 27 September 1916; subsequently confirmed by Court of Inquiry, 3 November 1917, as killed in action, 27 Sepotember 1916.

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