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, Western Front

Taken on strength, Tel el Kebir, 19 January 1916. Admitted to 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Ferry Post, 8 March 1916 (influenza); discharged to unit, 22 March 1916. Taken on strength, 32nd Bn, 6 April 1916. Found guilty, 7 May 1916, of being absent without leave, 0900 until arrested in Ismailia at 1530, 7 May 1916: awarded 5 days' confinement to camp and forfeiture of 1 day's pay. Found guilty, 7 May 1916, of drunkenness: awarded 7 days' confinement to barracks and 5/- fine. Found guilty, 5 June 1916, of falling out of march without an officer's permission: awarded 3 days' confinement to camp.

Embarked from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 17 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 23 June 1916.

Wounded in action, 20 July 1916 (gun shot wound, nose); admitted to No. 1 Convalescent Depot, 21 July 1916; transferred to 5th Australian Division Base Depot, 5 August 1916; rejoined Bn, 5 September 1916. Found guilty, 28 December 1916, of falling out of march without an officer's permission: awarded 10 extra drills (30 minutes each).

Detached to Trench Mortar School, 2 January 1917; rejoined Bn, 15 January 1917. Appointed Lance Corporal, 23 March 1917; Corporal, 18 April 1917. On leave to England, 19 April 1917; rejoined Bn, 3 May 1917.

Detached to 8th Training Bn, England, 19 July 1917. Marched into 8th Training Bn, Hurdcott, 23 July 1917. Appointed Acting Sergeant, 15 October 1917. Reverted to permanent rank of Corporal on proceeding overseas to France, 15 November 1917; rejoined 32nd Bn, 22 November 1917.

Admitted to 5th Australian Field Ambulance, 19 December 1917 (orchitis); rejoined unit, 24 December 1917.

Killed in action, 16 March 1918.