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

Absorbed into 1st Light Horse Regiment, Gallipoli, 29 August 1915. Disembarked Alexandria from Gallipoli, 27 November 1915.

Found guilty of (1) absent without leave while on inlying picquet 6-10 pm, 1 January 1916 (2) absent without leave while on inlying picquet 9.30 am, 2 January 1916, to 6.30 am, 4 January 1916: awarded 21 days' detention and forfeiture of 3 days' pay.

Absorbed into 12th Light Horse Regiment, 22 February 1916; transferred to 5th Division Field Artillery, 1 April 1916. Promoted Bombardier, 1 May 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 18 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 25 June 1916.

Admitted to 102nd Field Ambulance, 25 October 1916 (venereal disease); admitted to 18th General Hospital, Camiers, 28 October 1916; to 31st General Hospital, Rouen, 23 November 1916; discharged to Base Details, 30 November 1916; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 37 days. Rejoined unit, 9 December 1916.

On leave to England, 4 June 1917; rejoined unit from leave, 11 June 1917. Admitted to 8th Australian Field Ambulance, 11 June 1917 (gonorrhoea); admitted to 39th General Hospital, Havre, 14 June 1917; discharged to Base Depot, 30 July 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 50 days. Rejoined unit, 7 August 1917.

Killed in action, 30 September 1917.