"Your hearing, your eyesight ... all your senses get weaker as you get older, but all your emotions get stronger," the 95-year-old says.

"At the very least, your ability to resist them gets weaker. Something like bugle calls would never have affected me 10 years ago, but now, standing there and listening to the Last Post, it's hard to stay in control."

Mr Cook enlisted in the army in May 1940, when he was just 17. He was four years too young to enlist, while his father Ernest, who had already served in World War I, was four years too old.

But, spurred on by a desire to stand alongside Britain against Nazi Germany, the pair wouldn't be deterred and fudged their ages.

"You could have said your name was Ned Kelly," Mr Cook laughs.

"You didn't need any evidence. We both enlisted under our own names and I've always thought that Mum could've rung up and had us kicked out, but she knew we would've just gone somewhere else and enlisted under a different name.

"We felt that we had a responsibility to support the [British] stand."

Still a teenager, Mr Cook served in north Africa, Greece, Crete and Syria, before his unit was sent to Papua New Guinea to halt the Japanese advance on Port Moresby - a mission now known as the Kokoda campaign.

When World War II ended, he fought in the Pacific War, then spent more than a year in Japan during the Australian occupation.

But Mr Cook doesn't consider himself a hero, and even says he's embarrassed by all the attention.

"When I go to these services, I think, 'They're talking about you'," he said.

"We were just the generation that happened to be alive at the time.

"People ask me, 'What did you do in the war?' and I tell them, 'I walked among kings'."

He's referring to men like Corporal John Metson, who crawled in agony down the Kokoda Track for three weeks after he was shot in the ankle.

Corporal Metson refused to be stretchered because he didn't want his comrades to carry him, and remained cheerful until the seriously wounded were eventually left at the village of Sangai, where they were discovered and executed by Japanese soldiers.

"That story will tell you more about the war than I ever could," Mr Cook says.

Mr Cook, who moved to Canberra from Melbourne in 1964, is one of the last remaining survivors of World War II, but he's not worried about the soldiers' legacy being lost.

He remains involved with the Woden Valley RSL sub-branch, and as he marches down Anzac Parade each year, he says he is amazed by the number of young faces among the crowds.

"The young people are showing so much interest in it. They don't need any push to do so," Mr Cook said.

"It's a very significant day. There's no doubt about that."