He had seen many of his comrades fall...among them chaps who had become firm friends.
At one stage I asked him if he ever feared he would lose his life and he quickly snapped back that no, he did not.
"No one went there thinking they were going to die," was pretty much what he said...and said firmly.
I thought about that and I wondered why on earth I'd asked it.
So, in future chats with veterans that question never emerged again, because when people went to, or indeed still go to, areas of combat and danger they go with thoughts of returning home again.
Sadly, reality bites and many do not come home.
This grand gentleman told me about how in so many cases burials had to be carried out on the spot.
He had on occasions wielded a shovel accordingly.
He'd go through and come home and had lived to a grand old age, and loved to look out the window of the rest village he was happily settled in and see the distant hills...which at one stage he said looked a bit hazy.
To me they were clear as a bell but I remarked it must have been the humidity in the air.
"Something like that," he said with a smile.
I went away in a slight state of awe because I looked though my notes and took in where he had been and what he had seen and done.
And during the bloodbath of Passchendaele he had been just 20.
At 20 the most challenging thing I was faced with was trying to put a new rear tyre on my motorcycle.
Like I daresay many of us do, I asked myself if I could have done what he and his fellow young soldiers had done, and had to deal with for so many year afterwards.
But hey, back then there was no immediate sources of international information, and some of those young men would probably not have even known where Turkey was or what was happening there.
When war broke out they were asked, as members of the great British Empire, to rally to the cause and serve their King and country.
For so very many young lads it was a great way to go off and see the world, as the wages they were probably taking home back then were unlikely to have allowed them to save up the passage to Great Britain and few weeks accommodation as they ventured across for a look at Europe.
I've read many histories of World War I and a common theme was that many of those who signed up saw it as an adventure.
Which it most certainly was, but not the sort you cheerfully embrace.
Different times back then, and I daresay I would have signed up given that most of the lads in my social circle would have likely all done the same.
All for one and one for all.
I think about that question..."could I have done that?"...every time this Anzac time of the year rolls around.
The time of commemorating service and sacrifice.
And, as the RSA folk have proudly noted, so many young people get behind it today and that is so very heartening.
They are learning more about our past and they are learning about the people of our past.
There are wonderful murals and images made by children and posted at the gates of their schools.
They carry out history projects and draw special Anzac pictures because they know what that little red flower means.
The old digger I met with back in the early '90s would have been absolutely proud as punch.