Menin Gate at Midnight, Will Longstaff 1927. Image courtesy Australian War Memorial.
The Battle of Menin Road Ridge was an offensive operation launched by the British Second Army on the in the Ypres Salient in Flanders on the Western Front on 20 September 1917. Part of the Third Battle of Ypres, the action was an attempt to take sections of the curving ridge east of Ypres, traversed by the Menin Road. Fighting continued until 26 September and resulted in an Allied victory with 20,225 casualties, including 3,148 deaths. German casualties numbered 25,000 with 6,500 missing and 3,243 taken prisoner. The 1st and 2nd Divisions of the Australian Imperial Force saw action in this offensive; they sustained 5,013 casualties. Seven men from the Orange district died during the week long offensive; five of them on the opening day of battle:
Thomas Edward Priest
Henry Fabian Selley
Edward Alexander Dickson
William Robert Mulholland
Preston Edwin Argall
Walter Thomas Cornish
Alfred Leslie Northey
The Menin Gate Memorial at the eastern entrance to the town of Ypres in Belgium, pays tribute to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought on the Ypres salient. The monument is inscribed with the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the campaign and who have no known grave.
The Menin Gate Memorial was officially opened on 24 July 1927. Each evening at dusk a ceremony is held to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.
