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

Taken on strength, 9th Bn, Gallipoli, 6 May 1915.

Admitted to the 2nd Field Ambulance (febrile), Gallipoli, 22 August 1915; admitted to the 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Gallipoli, 22 August 1915; admitted to 1st Australian Stationary Hospital (debility), Lemnos, 23 August 1915; transferred to base, Lemnos, 15 September 1915; embarked Mudros for treatment in Britain, 18 September 1915; admitted to Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, England, 26 September 1915; admitted to 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, 20 November 1915.

Found guilty, 10 January 1916, of being absent from defaulters call at 1.00pm and 5.00pm, 10 January 1916: awarded 72 hours detention.

Reported at depot from hospital, England, 15 March 1916.

Marched in, 3rd Training Bn, Weymouth, 7 June 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 July 1916; marched in, 1st Australian Divisional Base Depot, Etaples, 26 July 1916.

Taken on strength, 9th Bn, in the field, 9 August 1916.

Admitted to 5th Dressing Station (trench fever), 21 April 1917; admitted to the 12th General Hospital, Rouen, 23 April 1917; transferred to 2nd Convalescent Depot, Rouen, 20 May 1917; discharged to 1st Australian Divisional Base Depot, Havre, 23 May 1917.

Rejoined 9th Bn, France, 4 June 1917.

Proceeded on leave to the United Kingdom, 10 September 1917; rejoined unit in the field, 25 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 7 October 1917.