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

Joined 7th Bn at Gallipoli, 26 May 1915. Wounded in action, 8-9 August 1915 (bullet wound, head and leg); disembarked from Hospital Ship 'Itonus' at Malta, 14 August 1915, and admitted to St George's Hospital. Transferred on HS 'Oxfordshire' to England, 29 August 1915, and admitted to Military Hospital, Hampstead, 5 September 1915. Embarked to join Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, 25 March 1916. Taken on strength, Anzac Provost Corps, 3 April 1916.

Found guilty of being absent without leave from 2400, 7 September, to 1130, 8 September 1916: awarded 4 days' confined to barracks and forfeiture of 2 days' pay; total forfeiture: 3 days' pay. Found guilty, 1 October 1916, of 'neglect of duty': reprimanded. Found guilty, 15 November 1916, of (1) breaking out of barracks; (2) insolence to his superior Officer: awarded 14 days' Field Punishment No. 2. Admitted to Field Punishment Compound, Abbassia, 16 November 1916; released, 29 November 1916.

Transferred to 7th Bn Details, 30 November 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 13 January 1917; rejoined 7th Bn, 8 March 1917.

Found guilty, 30 May 1917, of obscene language to an N.C.O.: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No. 2. Detached for duty with 2nd Machine Gun Company, Belgium, 28 September 1917.

Reported missing in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917; confirmed killed in action, 4 October 1917.