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It has been more than 100 years since Bendigo man Alfred Manning enlisted in the First World War.
Still, his descendants get emotional talking about him.
His granddaughter Lois Newman fondly remembers the Gallipoli veteran.
“His one real passion was his piano accordion,” she says.
“He played that every time we had a family get together.”
Driver Manning was among the first 200 people in Bendigo to join the war effort and was part of the 7th Battalion of the First Australian Imperial Force.
Nine year old Lily Richter knows her then 24-year old great-great-grandfather was fairly “old” in comparison to some of the other young men signing up for service.
He lived and died well before she was born, but her face glows with pride as she holds Mr Manning’s 1915 service medal.
Lily will be among three generations of descendants walking in Driver Manning’s memory during the Field of Remembrance procession from Rosalind Park to the piazza from 3pm on Sunday.
Her mother, Nicole Richter, says the family received a cross to place in the field last year when the initiative was launched.
This will be their second year of involvement.
Twenty five new crosses will be placed as part of the ceremony on Sunday, bringing the total up to 245.
The field will grow each year until the end of the Anzac Centenary in 2018.
Driver Manning’s service took him around the world.
Mrs Richter says her great grandfather was on the SS Novian when he landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.
He left Australia on HMAT Honorata in Melbourne about six months earlier, bound for Egypt.
“After serving in the Gallipoli campaign… he served in France and in Belgium, and spent a lot of time in England in hospital,” Mrs Richter says.
Many of Driver Manning’s hospital admissions were for respiratory issues.
Mrs Newman remembers her grandfather had a ‘dreadful cough’, which the family initially assumed was related to smoking.
“We later found out he had been gassed in the trenches – it never really left him,” she says.
Driver Manning was granted special leave for being an original enlistee still in active service in 1918.
“He came back to Australia just before armistice,” Mrs Richter says.
Shortly after returning to Bendigo, Driver Manning married and fathered four children.
Mrs Newman says one of her pop’s most memorable anecdotes was about fighting the Japanese in his pajamas.
He later served as a prison guard in the Second World War.
“That was about the only thing he ever really talked about,” Mrs Newman says.
