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, 12th Bn, Gallipoli, 6 August 1915. Admitted to No. 1 Field Ambulance, 26 August 1915 (bronchitis); transferred to No. 1 Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Mudros, 26 August 1915; by HS 'Ioanian' to Malta, 29 August 1915, and admitted to St George's Hospital; transferred to All Saints' Hospital, Malta, 24 September 1915 (rheumatic fever); embarked for Mudros, 15 November 1915; admitted to Overseas Base, Ghezirah, Egypt, 4 December 1915; discharged to unit, Tel el Kebir, 28 December 1915.

Admitted to 2nd Field Ambulance, 15 March 1916; transferred to 1st Australian Stationary Hospital, Serapeum, 17 March 1916; discharged to duty from 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, 2 April 1916; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 19 days.

Embarked from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 9 May 1916; joined Base Depot, France, 20 May 1916; taken on strength, 12th Bn, 4 August 1916.

Wounded in action, 5-8 May 1917 (gun shot wound, right elbow and hand); admitted to 7th Canadian General Hospital, Etaples, 7 May 1917; transferred to 6th Convalescent Depot, 26 May 1917; discharged to Base Depot, Havre, 6 June 1917; rejoined unit, 18 June 1917. Proceeded on leave, 28 July 1917; rejoined unit from leave, 12 August 1917.

Killed in action, 8 October 1917.