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 Regiment at Gallipoli and posted to 'B' Squadron, 24 October 1915. Admitted to 3rd Field Ambulance, 9 November 1915 (mumps); rejoined Regiment, 22 November 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 27 December 1915 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 24 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 27 March 1916. Taken on strength, 1st Anzac Mounted Regiment, 13 May 1916; transferred to 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment, 7 July 1916. On leave, 20 October 1916; rejoined from leave, 31 October 1916. Detached for duty with CRE, Armentieres, 26 September 1916; rejoined Regiment, 10 December 1916.

Detached to New Zealand Division, 16 April 1917; rejoined Regiment, 22 April 1917. Detached to Anti-Aircraft Section, 2nd Anzac, 21 June 1917; rejoined Regiment, 9 July 1917. Detached to School of Instruction, 9 July 1917; rejoined Regiment, 15 July 1917. On leave, 30 July 1917; 1917. Appointed Lance Corporal, 3 September 1917. Detached to 2nd Anzac Salvage Company, 27 November 1917; rejoined Regiment, 2 February 1918. On leave, 8 March 1918; rejoined Regiment, 26 March 1918. Detached to 49th Division, 28 March 1918; rejoined Regiment, 12 April 1918. Detached to 9th Corps, 16 April 1918.

Killed in action, 18 April 1918.