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, Western Front

Taken on strength, 59th Bn, Tel el Kebir, 26 February 1916. Transferred to 60th Bn, 15 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 18 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 29 June 1916.

Wounded in action, 19 July 1916 (gun shot wound, chest); admitted to 25th General Hospital, 21 July 1916; transferred to England, 24 July 1916, and admitted to Kitchener War Hospital, Brighton, 31 July 1916 (wound severe). Proceeded overseas to France, 11 November 1916; rejoined Bn, 2 December 1916.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 5 December 1916; promoted Corporal, 16 January 1917; Sergeant, 27 February 1917.

Admitted to New Zealand Dtationary Hospital, Amiens, 4 April 1917 (conjunctivitis); transferred to Hospital train, 29 April 1917, and admitted to No 2 General Hospital, Havre, 30 April 1917; transferred to No 4 convalescent Depot, 1 May 1917; discharged to Base Depot, 17 May 1917; rejoined Bn, 26 May 1917.

Marched out to 2nd Army School of Instruction, 12 August 1917; rejoined Bn, 15 September 1917.

Reported wounded and missing in action, 25 September 1917; Court of enquiry subsequently confirmed fate as killed in action.

Statement by 3329 Corporal E. JUDD, 60th Bn, Hurdcott, 11 March 1918: 'No 3926A Sgt Smart G. was acting Platoon Sergeant No 6 Platoon, 'B' Company, 60th Battalion. In the fighting at Glencourse Wood he was wounded along-side me. The company moved on to our objective and Smart was left behind wounded. This was on the morning of the 25th September 1917. On the 27th September 1917, we were coming out of the line, on passing over Westhoeke Ridge, I saw Smart lying dead. The first wound he got at Glencourse was a slight one and he had evidently been killed by another shell when he was on his way to the dressing station at Clapham Junction.'