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, Gallipoli, Western Front

Proceeded to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 12 April 1915. Admitted to 4th Field Ambulance, 20 July 1915 (diarrhoea). Embarked from Mudros for England, 30 August 1915 (dysentery). Marched into Australian Infantry Depot, England, 22 October 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, Egypt, from England, 15 January 1916; rejoined unit, same day.

Admitted to 4th Field Ambulance, Ismailia, 20 January 1916; transferred to 4th Auxiliary Hospital, Abbassia, 21 January 1916; rejoined unit, Tel el Kebir, 9 March 1916. Transferred to 4th Division Artillery, 16 March 1916; to 4th Divisional Ammunition Column, 19 April 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 6 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 13 June 1916. Attached to Trench Mortar School, 16 September 1916; rejoined unit, 30 September 1916.

Admitted while on leave to 51st General Hospital, Etaples, 16 February 1917; discharged to Base Depot, 1 April 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 45 days. Rejoined unit, 17 April 1917.

Found guilty, while on active service, of travelling without a pass: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

Transferred to 10th Field Artillery Brigade, and taken on strength of 39th Battery, 11 May 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 11 October 1917.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal