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

Embarked, Brisbane, 1 May 1916.

Embarked, Alexandria, Egypt, to join the British Expeditionary Force, 6 August 1916; proceeded overseas to France from England, 22 September 1916; marched into 4th Australian Divisional Base Depot, Etaples, France, 24 September 1916; marched out to unit, 2 October 1916; taken on strength of 47th Bn, in the Field, 3 October 1916.

Admitted to 12th Field Ambulance (vericose veins), 21 October 1916; to 1st Convalescent Depot, Boulogne, 23 October 1916; marched into 4th Australian Divisional Base Depot from Hospital, 4th Australian Divisional Base Depot, 25 October 1916.

Admitted to 26th General Hospital (varicose veins), to England, 18 January 1918; admitted to Military Hospital, England, 21 January 1917; to 1st Australian Auxiliary Hospital, Harefield, 17 February 1917; discharged, 28 March 1917; to report to Wareham on 12 April 1917; proceeded overseas to France via Folkestone, 9 May 9118; marched into 4th Australian Divisional Base Depot, Etaples, France, 10 May 1917; marched out to unit, 13 May 1917; rejoined unit from Hospital, 15 May 1917; killed in action, Belgium, 7 June 1917.