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 from Alexandria to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Gallipoli, 4 September 1915.

Found guilty, 18 December 1915, of using insubordinate language to a Superior Officer: awarded 7 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

Disembarked Alexandria ex Mudros, 9 January 1916 (general Gallipoli evacuation).

Found guilty, 24 January 1916, of being absent without leave, 9.15 pm, 18 January, to 6 pm, 23 January 1916: awarded 14 days' detention; forfeited 6 days' pay.

Admitted to No. 2 Casualty Clearing Station, 8 February 1916; transferred to No. 1 Stationary Hospital, Tel el Kebir; to Base Hospital, 10 February 1916; discharged to Overseas Base Depot, Abbassia, 14 March 1916; total period of treatment for venereal disease: 36 days.

Taken on strength, 31st Bn, 6 April 1916.

Proceeded from Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force, 16 June 1916; disembarked Marseilles, France, 23 June 1916.

Absent from tattoo roll call, 6 July 1916: awarded 24 hours' Field Punishment No. 2, 7 July 1916.

Wounded in action, 20 July 1916 (gun shot wound, upper extremities, slight); admitted to 8th Stationary Hospital, Wimereux, 20 July 1916 (gun shot wound, right hand); transferred to England, 21 July 1916, admitted to War Hospital, Leeds; transferred to 1st Australian Auxiliary Hospital, Harefield, 19 September 1916; to No. 2 Command Depot, Weymouth, 22 September 1916; to No. 1 Command Depot, Perham Downs, 11 October 1916; to No. 3 Command Depot, Woolwich, 13 October 1916; to No. 4 Command Depot, Wareham, 3 November 1916.

Found guilty of being absent without leave from tattoo, 17 December, to 1 pm, 18 December 1916: awarded 24 hours' detention; forfeited 3 days' pay.

Found guilty, 18 May 1917, of conduct to the prejudice of good order and Military Discipline in that he used obscene language on parade: awarded 10 days' Field Punishment No. 2.

Proceeded overseas to France, 27 May 1917; rejoined 31st Bn, 22 June 1917.

Killed in action, 12 October 1917.