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

Embarked Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 2 March 1915.

Wounded in action (gun shot wound, buttocks; date not recorded); disembarked Malta from HS 'Clan MacGillivray', 4 May 1915, and admitted to Convalescent Hospital, Tigue. Transferred to Alexandria (date not recorded); embarked Alexandria for Gallipoli, 26 May 1915.

Admitted to No 2 Field Ambulance, Gallipoli, 24 July 1915 (ear trouble); transferred to Fleetsweeper, 25 July 1915, and admitted same day to No 2 Stationary Hospital, Mudros; transferred to Alexandria, 29 July 1915, and admitted to No 3 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 10 August 1915; to No 1 Australian Hospital, Cairo, 10 August 1915 (deafness); marched out to unit, 2 February 1915.

Embarked Alexandria, 3 August 1916; disembarked England, 18 August 1916; marched out to No 3 Training Bn, 21 September 1916.

Found guilty, 12 October 1916, of overstaying leave from 6.45 am, 10 October, to 8.30 pm, 10 October 1916: awarded 2 days' detention and forfeited 3 days' pay.

Proceeded overseas to France, 14 October 1916; taken on strength, 48th Bn, in the field, 31 October 1916.

Admitted to 12th Australian Field Ambulance, 11 May 1917; transferred same day to 12th Casualty Clearing Station; to 51st General Hospital, Etaples, 13 May 1917; discharged to duty, 2 June 1917; re-admitted to 51st General Hospital, 2 June 1917; discharged to Base Details, 16 June 1917. Found guilty, 24 July 1917, of falling out of line of march, 23 July 1917: awarded forfeiture of 10 days' pay. Rejoined unit, 27 July 1917.

Appointed Lance Corporal, 26 August 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 12 October 1917.