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

Proceeded to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 2 March 1915. Wounded in action, 2 May 1915 (shell wound, thigh: severe); admitted to 17th General Hospital, Alexandria, 1 May 1915; transferred to Overseas Base from Convalescent Camp, 29 May 1915. Embarked for Gallipoli, 8 June 1915; rejoined unit, 13 June 1915. Admitted to 3rd Australian Field Ambulance, 10 September 1915 (gastro-enteritis); transferred to 25th Casualty Clearing Station, Imbros, 10 September 1915; to 1st Stationary Hospital, Lemnos, 18 September 1915; to Convalescent Depot, Lemnos, 9 October 1915; rejoined unit at Gallipoli, 20 October 1915. Disembarked Alexandria, 29 December 1915 (general Gallipoli evacuation). Transferred to 50th Bn, 26 February 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 5 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 12 June 1916. Admitted to 12th Casualty Clearing Station, 13 July 1916 (scalded foot); transferred to England, 15 July 1916, and admitted to 2nd Northern General Hospital, Leeds. Transferred to No. 1 Auxiliary Hospital, Harefield, 19 August 1916; discharged to Convalescent Depot, Perham Downs, 1 September 1916; marched into 13th Training Bn, 24 September 1916. Found guilty of committing a nuisance in the Company Lines and of giving a false name and number, 28 January 1917: awarded 21 days' Field Punishment No. 2. Admitted to 1st Australian Dermatological Hospital, Bulford, 6 February 1917; discharged, 24 March 1917; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 47 days. Proceeded overseas to France, 19 April 1917; rejoined Bn, 25 April 1917.

Killed in action, 10 June 1917.