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

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force; disembarked Gallipoli, 30 August 1915. Disembarked Alexandria from Mudros, 10 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 19 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 26 March 1916. Admitted to 5th Australian Field Ambulance, 31 December 1916 (piles); transferred to 1st Anzac Rest Station, 31 December 1916; to 36th Casualty Clearing Station, 31 December 1916; to 20th General Hospital, Camiers, 1 January 1917; to No. 6 Convalescent Depot, Etaples, 13 January 1917; to 2nd Australian Divisional Base Depot, 19 January 1917; rejoined unit, 26 January 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 1 March 1917.

Admitted to 8th Australian Field Ambulance, 27 March 1917 (boils); transferred to 1/1 South Midland Casualty Clearing Station, 6 April 1917; to 3rd Stationary Hospital, Rouen, 9 April 1917; to No. 2 Convalescent Depot, 9 April 1917; to 2nd Australian Divisional Base Depot, 13 April 1917; rejoined unit, 27 April 1917.

Admitted to 5th Australian Field Ambulance, 10 May 1917 (farunculosis); transferred to 9th Casualty Clearing Station, 10 May 1917; to No. 4 Casualty Clearing Station, 16 May 1917; rejoined unit, 12 June 1917. On leave to England, 26 August 1917; admitted to East Leeds Military Hospital whilst on leave, 5 September 1917 (not yet diagnosed); discharged, 30 September 1917, to proceed overseas; rejoined unit from leave, 2 October 1917.

in action, Belgium, 9 October 1917; subsequently reported wounded and missing; Court of Enquiry determined fate as 'killed in action'.