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

Admitted to 2nd Field Ambulance, Gallipoli, 23 June 1915; transferred to No. 16 Stationary Hospital, Mudros, 25 June 1915 (influenza); transferred to hospital, Alexandria, 22 July 1915. Discharged to duty at base, 28 July 1915. Admitted to Reception Hospital, Mustapha, 9 August 1915.

Commenced return to Australia from Port Said, 20 October 1915 (enteric); disembarked Melbourne, 22 November 1915.

Returned to duty, 6 March 1916.

Re-embarked from Melbourne, 11 September 1916, as R6250 Pte, 5th Bn, 20th Reinforcement, on board HMAT A14 'Euripides'; disembarked Plymouth, 26 October 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 12 January 1917; taken on strength, 5th Bn, 16 January 1917.

Admitted to 1st Australian Field Ambulance, 21 March 1917 (influenza); transferred to 5th Casualty Clearing Station, 16 April 1917 (trench fever); admitted to 3rd Canadian General Hospital, Boulogne, 23 April 1917; to 7th Convalescent Depot, 6 May 1917; rejoined unit, 26 August 1917.

Killed in action, 20 September 1917.

Buried about 300 yards S.W. of Glencorse Wood: grave lost in subsequent fighting.

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal