Harold was still a teenager, just five years older than Ben, when he enlisted to serve in World War I, marked his 21st birthday in the trenches of northern France, was wounded in the deadly battle of Bullecourt and spent the best part of two years in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

Those stark facts of his great-grandfather’s early life were only revealed to Ben in the course of his research for a school project on World War I late last year.

For the Warrnambool King’s College student, it was to bring history to life in the most personal of ways.

“He definitely related to the fact that boys not much older than he is went off to war,” said his mother, Roslyn Fitzgerald.

Now, Ben is anticipating his first Anzac Day march as a tribute to, and in the footsteps of his great-granddad.

In what is shaping up to be a family affair, he will be joined by Roslyn, Harold’s children Elaine Fitzgerald (Ben’s grandmother), Connie Lake, Shirley Fluck, Jack Bates and other family members.

It will be a bittersweet day for the family, honouring not only Harold’s war service, but also the anniversary of his death.

Harold, who survived the rigours of war to return home to Warrnambool and establish one of the city’s long-running jewellery stores, rarely missed an Anzac Day march — to his dying day in 1967.

He had, as in most years since his return to Australia after the war (coincidentally also on April 25, 1919), marched at the Anzac Day dawn service, before heading out to cut the greens at the Warrnambool Croquet Club where he was familiar to many as the greenkeeper.

There, he collapsed and died from a stroke, aged 71, on that most poignant of days.

When the family gathers to lay flowers on Harold’s grave after next week’s service, they will remember a soldier who put the horrors of war behind him to build a future for his family.

Harold Bates was no stranger to hardship. Born in Warrnambool, one of six children, his father James was something of an inventor, winning acclaim for his invention of the “Dairyman’s steam apparatus”.

But according to his daughters Connie and Elaine, James’ success as an inventor failed to translate into profits and the family moved to New Zealand, leaving Harold behind at Mepunga in the care of his Aunt Edith, unable to afford to take him with them.

About 13, Harold moved to Melbourne where he was apprenticed as a watchmaker to Forsters Jewellers.

With the rumblings of war on the horizon, Harold joined the Citizen Forces for two years and the Home Defence at Queenscliffe garrison for several months before enlisting with the AIF in January 1916, just short of his 20th birthday.

What lay ahead was far from the grand adventure he had envisioned.

Assigned as a private to the 14th Battalion 1st Division, Harold sailed for Egypt aboard the Euripedes, arriving in Alexandria in May for three months’ training with his division.

Just a month after arriving in France in August, Harold was shipped off to hospital in England suffering influenza.

It was Boxing Day, in the depths of the European winter, when Harold finally rejoined his battalion in northern France. By March, Harold had come of age, but nothing could have prepared him for the April 11 battle of Bullecourt that would go down in history for its heavy Australian casualties.

Of the 5700 Australians who took part in what was Australia’s first attack on Germany’s Hindenburg Line, 2500 were killed and 1170 were taken prisoner — among them Harold Bates.

After he was initially reported missing, it later emerged that Harold had been captured and taken to Stalag X11A POW camp at Limburg, Germany — gassed and suffering shrapnel wounds to his back.

The camp, which housed about 2000 prisoners, many of them Irish, was to be home to Harold for the duration of the war before he was repatriated to England in December 1918.

Despite his injuries, Harold was assigned to work during his internment, his craftsman’s skills put to use assisting the local village watchmaker.

On his return to Australia, Harold spent several months in Melbourne’s Caulfield Military Hospital where he met his future wife, Doris, who was working as a “wards maid”.

The shrapnel remained in his back, doctors deeming it too close to his spine to risk removing, issuing warnings that it could move at any time, resulting in paraplegia.

“He was warned not to do too much hard work because it could shift,” Elaine recalled, “although it didn’t seem to stop him”.

Harold and Doris married in 1923, settling back in Warrnambool, raising four children and running several businesses before Harold established H.W. Bates Jewellers in Lava Street in the early ’30s.

“We fixed watches and clocks, sold jewellery and gifts and we also tested people’s eyes and sent away prescriptions for glasses,” said Connie, who along with Elaine, later worked in the shop.

When Harold retired in 1957, Connie and her husband Stan Lake bought the business, which became the long-established Lake’s Jewellers.

Harold’s heavy community involvement included numerous sporting clubs, among them East Warrnambool Football Club, angling and cycling clubs, City Memorial Bowls Club and the Warrnambool Croquet Club.

He was also a city councillor for several years.

jmclaren@standard.fairfax.com.au