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

Embarked Melbourne, 19 October 1914.

Embarked Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 20 May 1915.

Admitted to No. 16 Stationary Hospital, Mudros, 2 July 1915; admitted to No. 2 General Hospital (septic hand), Gezira, 19 July 1915; admitted Mena House Hospital (gun shot wound, foot and arm), Mena, 21 July 1915; transferred to Base Details, Heliopolis, 3 August 1915.

Rejoined regiment, Gallipoli, 17 September 1915.

Disembarked Alexandria following evacuation from Gallipoli, 27 December 1915.

Embarked Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, France, 21 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles, 27 March 1916.

Taken on strength, 1st Australian and New Zealand Mounted Regiment, France, 13 May 1916.

Transferred to 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment, France, 7 July 1916.

Detached for duty with the Corps of Royal Engineers, Armentières, 26 September 1916.

Proceeded on leave, 8 December 1916; rejoined 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment from detachment to the Corps of Royal Engineers, 10 December 1916; rejoined 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment in the field from leave, 10 January 1917.

Detached for duty with Assistant Provost Marshal, 2nd Anzac Headquarters, France, 13 January 1917; rejoined 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment from detachment, 19 March 1917.

Detached for duty with the New Zealand Division, 16 April 1917; rejoined 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment from detachment, 22 April 1917.

Detached for duty with Assistant Provost Marshal, 2nd Anzac Headquarters, 26 April 1917; rejoined 2nd Anzac Mounted Regiment from detachment, 3 May 1917.

Transferred to 8th Bn, France, 5 June 1917; marched into 1st Australian Divisional Base Depot, Havre, 6 June 1917; proceeded to join unit in the field, 8 June 1917; taken on strength, 8th Bn, France, 10 June 1917.

Killed in action, Polygon Wood, 20 September 1917.

Note on Statement of Service records: 'Buried in the vicinity of Sheet 28 V15 a + b west of line V15.b.4.9 South of Polygon Wood East of Glencorse Wood.'