When poor health forced Peter Ryan to take early retirement in the late 1990s the way was cleared for the newly graduated law student and Vietnam veteran to help his mates.
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He has been a "go to guy" for ex-servicemen trying to negotiate the Department of Veterans Affairs maze ever since.
Mr Ryan also became the public face of Canberra's Vietnam veterans and was the local president of the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia from 2003 to 2013.
He has no idea who dobbed him in for the Order of Australia Medal he was awarded in this year's Australia Day honours list but concedes the list of suspects could run into the hundreds.
"I am really chuffed to have been recognised by the veteran's community," he said. "I really enjoyed it when I was able to get a letter from the DVA saying that somebody had been accepted for a TPI pension. I've heard some harrowing tales (as an accredited pensions officer) but helping others has also helped me."
Born in 1946, Mr Ryan fell in love with planes as a boy and enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1965.
Sent to Vietnam with 9 Squadron (Iroquois helicopters) in 1968, he couldn't believe his eyes when the Boeing 707 carrying the new arrivals came in to land.
"I'd never seen so many planes in all my life," he said. "We watched as two Hercules fuel tankers roared down the strip followed by Phantom fighter bombers with full loads of ordinance. They couldn't take off with a full fuel load (due to weight) and had two minutes to link up with the tankers.
"Vietnam was hot and dry for six months and hot and wet for six months. Our job was similar to what we had been doing in Canberra but at a much higher tempo."
After leaving the RAAF Mr Ryan worked in the printing industry until he was diagnosed with heart disease and post traumatic stress disorder.
"I had also completed an arts degree and a law degree," he said. "People in the Vietnam Veterans Association collared me and said there were others who had not been as fortunate with an education and that I had the skills to help them."
Over the next two decades he served on almost 20 different veterans' committees and organisations.
He is proudest of seeing Canberra's annual Vietnam Veterans Day Service grow from 50 borrowed chairs and a ghetto blaster in 2000 to more than 3,500 attendees in 2016.
"The fly over by the two B-52s (from Guam) was the icing on the cake."
Mr Ryan is now battling cancer and has had to step down from most of his former roles.
