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.

Military Medal

War service: Egypt, Gallipoli, Western Front

Joined 3rd Light Horse Regiment at Gallipoli, 6 August 1915. To hospital, 27 August 1915 (details not recorded); rejoined unit, 21 September 1915. Admitted to 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance, 1 October 1915 (rheumatism); transferred from Mudros by HS 'Mahens', to Egypt, 1 October 1915; admitted to No 1 General Hospital, Heliopolis, 5 October 1915. Rejoined 3rd Light Horse Regiment, 29 December 1915, and proceeded to Western Front.

Admitted to 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance, Kantara, 18 May 1916 (pybitis); transferred to 31st General Hospital, Port Said, 23 May 1916; to 3rd Australian General Hospital, Cairo, 14 June 1916 (renal calculus). Transferred to England. 24 June 1916; admitted to 3rd London General Hospital, 3 July 1916 (cryisties); discharged to duty, 31 July 1916. Taken on strength, 43rd Bn, 23 September 1916. Appointed Lance Corporal, 16 November 1916. Proceeded overseas to France, 25 November 1916.

Admitted to Divisional Rest Station, 14 December 1916 (mumps); transferred to 7th General Hospital, St Omer, 15 December 1916; discharged to Base Details, 4 January 1917; rejoined Bn, 5 January 1917. Admitted to Divisional Rest Station, 24 April 1917; discharged to duty, 26 April 1917.

Promoted Temporary Corporal, 8 May 1917; Corporal, 22 June 1917. Awarded the Military Medal, 24 June 1917. Promoted Lance Sergeant, 12 July 1917.

Killed in action, 31 July 1917.