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

Embarked from Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 5 April 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 28 December 1915 (general Gallipoli evacuation). Found guilty, 2 February 1916, of breaking camp and being absent without leave, 0615, 8 February, to 0930, 9 February 1916: awarded 3 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeited 2 days' pay.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 22 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 28 March 1916. On leave, 29 April 1916; rejoined 2nd Bn from leave, 10 May 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 16 May 1916.

Admitted to No. 11 General Hospital, Camiers, 10 December 1916 (pyrexia, unknown origin); transferred to No. 6 Convalescent Camp, Etaples [date unclear]; rejoined 2nd Bn, 21 March 1917. To Summer Rest Camp, 13 August 1917; rejoined Bn, 27 August 1917. Detached for duty with 1st Field Company Engineers, 28 September 1917.

Wounded in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917. Court of Enquiry confirmed fate as 'killed in action'. Statement by 2866 Pte C.V. ROSS, 10 July 1918: 'The above-named L/Cpl Warrington A. was detailed for Engineers' Fatigue on or about the 4.10.17 and all the information I could gather concerning him was that he was last seen wounded. No further details regarding him were reported to the Battalion Headquarters up to the time of my leaving the unit.' Statement by 6283 Pte J.A. JOYCE, 29 April 1918: 'About 4th October 1917 at Polygon Wood, France [sic], I saw No. 133 L/Cpl Warrington A. of the 2nd Battalion A.I.F. walking to dressing station, wounded in arm. This is the last I saw of him. I never made enq if he ever reached the dressing station.'