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, 6th Bn, Serapeum, 22 February 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 26 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 2 April 1916. Found guilty, 25 May 1916, of failing to comply with an order on 22 May 1916: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

Admitted to No. 2 Field Ambulance, 1 June 1916 (poisoned hand); transferred to Divisional Rest Station, 2 June 1916; to No. 3 Stationary Hospital, Boulogne, 9 June 1916; to England, 10 June 1916, and admitted to County of London War Hospital.

Proceeded overseas to France, 8 October 1916. Found guilty, 18 October 1916, of being absent without leave, 5.30 am, 13 October, to 11.30 am, 14 October 1916: awarded 8 days' Field Punishment No. 2 and forfeiture of 2 days' pay.

Transferred to 59th Bn, 31 October 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 9 November 1916. Admitted to Anzac Rest Station, 4 December 1916 (chill); discharged to duty, 20 December 1916; rejoined Bn, 21 December 1916. Promoted Corporal, 4 January 1917.

Admitted to 38th Casualty Clearing Station, 23 January 1917 (debility); transferred to 12th General Hospital, Rouen, 26 January 1917; to England, 31 January 1917 (lumbago and debility), and admitted to VA Hospital, Cheltingham. Granted furlough, 23 April 1917, to report to Training Depot, Wareham, 8 May 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 June 1917; rejoined Bn, 20 July 1917. Promoted Sergeant, 7 October 1917.

Killed in action, 16 October 1917.