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: Western Front

Embarked Melbourne, 25 October 1916; disembarked Plymouth, 28 December 1916.

Marched out from 2nd Training Bn, Durrington, to Parkhouse Hospital, 27 February 1917; marched in to 2nd Training Bn from Parkhouse Hospital, 17 March 1917 (no details recorded).

Proceeded overseas to France, 10 April 1917; taken on strength, 6th Bn, 11 May 1917.

Reported missing in action, Belgium, 4 October 1917. Court of Enquiry, 28 November 1917, confirmed fate as killed in action.

Statement, Red Cross File No 0850305L, 6778 Pte S.R. HUGGINS, 6th Bn, 7 March 1919: 'He went over the top along with us during a heavy bombardment by the Germans. He was not seen again and it was thought, that he sank in a shell hole. It was muddy and marshy all round. He came from Melbourne and was married, a grocer by trade.'

Second statement, 6954 Pte T. BLUNDELL, 6th Bn, 12 September 1918: 'I saw Crosier [sic] killed. He was buried in Polygon Wood on 4-10-17. Ground was held.'

Third statement, 5370 Pte E.G. DUNN, 6th Bn, 19 September 1919: 'I knew Casualty. He was well built, 5 ft. 8 ins. fair 30 years of age, known as "Bill". He was a 20the Rfcts. Casualty was a bomber and was advancing at Passchendaele Ridge, Ypres, when a shell landed killing him instantly. I was right alongside of him at the time of his death. He was not buried.'