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

Taken on strength, 11th Bn, Gallipoli, 7 May 1915. Wounded in action, 6 August 1915 (gun shot wound, left hand); admitted to HS 'Delta', 8 August 1915; disembarked Alexandria, 11 August 1915, and admitted same day to 1st Australian General Hospital, Heliopolis; transferred to No. 3 Auxiliary Hospital, 11 August 1915 (shattered fingers); to A. & NZ Convalescent Depot, Helouan, 20 October 1915; discharged to duty, 13 November 1915. Admitted to No. 4 Auxiliary Hospital, Abbassia, 24 February 1916 (mumps); discharged to duty, 6 March 1916. Transferred to 1st Australian General Hospital, 8 March 1916 (finger amputated); to No. 3 Auxiliary Hospital, Heliopolis, 8 March 1916; discharged to duty, 11 March 1916.

Embarked from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 29 July 1916. Proceeded overseas to France from England, 21 August 1916; joined 11th Bn, 4 September 1916.

Admitted to 1st Australian Field Ambulance, 17 February 1917 (trench feet); to 13th General Hospital, Boulogne, 1 March 1917; transferred to England on HS 'St Denis', 2 March 1917, and admitted to Edmonton Military Hospital, 2 March 1917 (trench feet: severe). Discharged to No. 3 Command Depot, 14 May 1917;marched out to Overseas Tranining Depot, 4 August 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 5 September 1917; rejoined unit, 20 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 20 September 1917.

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