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

Wounded in action, Gallipoli, 9 August 1915 (multiple shrapnel wounds, right arm, neck, shoulder). Transferred to England from Malta, 9 September 1915; admitted to No 5 London General Hospital (St Thomas's), 16 September 1915. Commenced return to Australia from Portland on board 'Suevic', 11 March 1916; discharged, 15 September 1916.

Re-enlisted, 2 February 1917, and re-embarked from Melbourne, 19 February 1917 with 39th Bn, 7th Reinforcement; disembarked Devonport, England, 25 April 1917. Found guilty, 25 June 1917, of being absent without leave, 5.30 pm, 24 June-11.30 am, 24 June 1917: awarded 14 days' Field Punishment No 2 and forfeiture of 16 days' pay. Also found guilty, 25 June 1917, of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline in that he left parade without permission, 21 June 1917, and being absent without leave from parade, 6.45 am, 22 June 1917: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No 2 (concurrent with previous award). Found guilty, 17 August 1917, of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline in that he neglected to put on his web equipment after being ordered to do so: awarded 4 days' Field Punishment No 2 and forfeiture of 28 days' pay.

Proceeded overseas to France, 20 August 1917; taken on strength, 39th Bn, 1 September 1917.

Missing in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917; subsequently declared killed in action.