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.

Military Medal

War service: Egypt, Western Front

Taken on strength, 8th Battery, 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, Heliopolis, 19 November 1915. Mustered as Driver, 23 January 1916; re-mustered as Gunner, 9 March 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 23 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 29 March 1916.

Wounded in action, 24 July 1916 (gun shot wound, right ankle), and admitted to 9th General Hospital, Rouen. Transferred to England, 27 July 1916, and admitted to Reading War Hospital (shell shock, severe, and gun shot wound, right ankle, severe). Found guilty, Fort Wallington, of being absent without leave, midnight, 27 December 1916, to noon, 2 January 1917: awarded 144 hours' detention and total forfeiture of 12 days' pay. Proceeded overseas to France, 8 January 1917; transferred to 1st Division Artillery, 17 January 1917. Rejoined 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, 14 February 1917. Awarded the Military Medal, 22 June 1917.

Wounded in action, 17 July 1917 (gun shot wound, shoulder and back), and admitted to 1st Canadian Casualty Clearing Station, 18 July 1917. Discharged to duty, 18 July 1917; rejoined unit, 19 July 1917. On leave to England, 23 September 1917; rejoined unit from leave, 12 October 1917.

Tried by Field General Court Martial, 20 October 1917, on a charge of while on Active Service being absent without leave, 3-12 October 1917: found 'Not Guilty' of the charge as stated, but 'Guilty' of being absent without leave: awarded 40 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

Killed in action, Belgium, 22 October 1917.