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.

Military Medal

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 20 April 1916.

Embarked Alexandria, 3 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 16 June 1916.

Embarked Rollestone to join the British Expeditionary Force, France, 25 July 1916; marched into 4th Australian Divisional Depot, Etaples, 26 July 1916.

Taken on strength, 47th Bn, France, 18 August 1916.

Admitted to 4th Australian Field Ambulance (influenza), 20 September 1916; rejoined unit in the field from hospital, 30 September 1916.

Admitted to 12th Australian Field Ambulance (otitis media), 26 October 1916; transferred to 1st South African General Hospital, Boulogne, 28 October 1916; discharged to base details, 20 November 1916; marched into 4th Australian Divisional Depot, Etaples, 21 November 1916.

Admitted to 18th General Hospital (suspected mumps), Camiers, 31 December 1916; discharged to base details, 21 January 1917; marched into 4th Australian Divisional Depot, Etaples, 21 January 1917.

Found guilty, 1 February 1917, for being absent without leave from 9.00am parade, 31 January 1917, Etaples: forfeits five days pay.

Rejoined unit in the field, 6 February 1917.

Awarded Military Medal, 23 June 1917.

Proceeded on leave, 9 September 1917; rejoined unit from leave, 20 September 1917.

Killed in action, Belgium, 12 October 1917.

Burial report notes buried at map reference: D.17.c.6.9.; grave subsequently lost.