Terry Keys did not want this story to be about him.

He's just one of many volunteers in country towns, he protested, in a selfless attitude typical of those who serve.

But at 75, and after almost 40 years as a volunteer ambulance officer in Boddington and now Dunsborough, he has a story worth telling.

When those closest to Mr Keys are asked to describe him, the words "tough", "hard working" and "disciplined" come up a lot.

"I suppose being in the Army you become quite disciplined and that's probably carried on up to now, you know throughout my life," he said.

"I was only saying to my brother yesterday, we were walking down the street, there was a path, people were cutting across the lawn and I said, 'I still can't do that because of the Army'.

"If you stepped on the grass on the parade ground or something like that, you were given a hard time."

Formative experience in Vietnam

Mr Keys spent two years as a national serviceman in the 1960s and saw four months of active service in Vietnam before being medically evacuated.

He doesn't like to make a big deal out of it, but his time in Vietnam shaped him.

"I can still smell it, that's the biggest thing I remember, the bloody smell," he said.

"It smelt rotten, like it wasn't clean, like a tip."

Terry Keys, left, served in Vietnam. He has made many friends during 40 years as a volunteer ambulance officer. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

Mr Keys also remembers a darkness in Vietnam, like nothing he'd experienced.

"You just couldn't see and those first few nights up there, we often talk if the Viet Cong had been smart they would have attacked us then, because no-one had their bearings," he said.

"There was nothing over the top and of a night-time, yeah, it was quite eerie with the fireflies dancing around.

"If you stare at those fireflies long enough you think it's somebody out there, you know you can hone in."

The phone can ring anytime with an emergency

Being alert to danger and ready to jump at a moment's notice is something Mr Keys has carried with him.

For the past four decades he has had a clean volunteer ambulance uniform ready to put on, any time of the day or night, if the phone rings with a call for help.

"I go to bed about half past eight, nine o'clock and they go off all hours of the night, and we have trouble covering the midnight to dawn shift," he said.

"I don't mind doing those because I'm not working, I can have a sleep the next day, so I often go out between midnight and dawn."

The benefit of teamwork is another valuable lesson Mr Keys learnt in Vietnam.

"You learn to rely on people because your life's in their hands and their life is in your hands," he said.

But he also learnt about death.

"I saw the results of death, like I saw death from either rifle fire or mortar or artillery," he said.

After attending countless road accidents and suicides, Mr Keys said death was something "you never get immune to."

Penny Keys, Terry's former wife is a nurse and debriefed with him after traumatic jobs. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

The horror of many of the fatal accidents he has attended has stayed with him and his former wife, Penny Keys.

They met several years after his return from Vietnam.

"We joined Rotaract, which was an offshoot, a junior offshoot of Rotary, and I was a member there and we used to do a lot of volunteer stuff around town and set up a couple of parks and a bit of socialising," he said.

"Penny had been an exchange student to Brazil and I met her when she came and did a talk about her experiences in Brazil, and that's how we finished up married."

He thought she was worldly.

"She was probably something different, Penny had been around, she'd been to Brazil and been to England," he said.

Ms Keys was impressed by her future husband's service.

"It's always attractive to know that people have got a bigger world than just their little backyard," she said.

"And then someone from the bush, that was a good fit.

"[He was] fit, healthy, had a head of hair, it was all different then," she teased.

Penny Keys is proud her former husband has helped so many people in their hour of need. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

Despite separating several years ago and selling their Quindanning farm, Penny and Terry Keys still catch up regularly.

Losing friends and locals

Ms Keys remembered clouds of dust on the gravel road they lived on, signalled Mr Keys was returning from an ambulance job.

"If it was in daytime, you could see the dust come for miles up and hear cars come because it's so blissfully quiet," she said.

"So there'd always be that rattle [of Terry's ute], 'oh my gosh, how many hours is that?' And 'how horrible must that have been', because usually the time is related to the horror of the whole thing.

"You'd always ask if it was someone you knew. 'Were they local?' — that would be my first question.

"Then you'd take a deep breath and say, 'who was it?'

"And then you'd ask 'what happened'.

'"You're horrified sometimes about what happens."

"You just thought, please God let it not be someone you know because, you know, the grief and the pain for that is so much."

Penny and Terry Keys still finish each other's sentences.

"When you drive to Perth," she started.

"You see the crosses," he chimed in.

"I think, 'thank goodness I don't have to drive up that road [Albany Highway] anymore,'" she said.

"Because it's just peppered with stories of people we know, who've come to grief, had horrid times."

Crosses on Albany Highway are painful reminders of community tragedy for the Keys family. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

During their marriage Penny worked as a nurse in the Great Southern.

"My life wasn't that different because working in a country hospital and often working in accident and emergency I'd be part of the same stories," she said.

'Could I have done more?'

Mr Keys said having someone with medical experience to debrief with after traumatic jobs was invaluable.

"Penny had the knowledge, like, I could ask her questions on any job, you know, 'I picked up a patient with this, this and this, what do you think was wrong?'" he said.

"It's always good to be able to talk to your boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, whoever.

Terry Keys has made many friends through his almost 40 years of service as a volunteer ambulance officer. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

"Even though you're talking shop, you just need to unload and run it through your mind.

"The biggest thing is I've always found is [thinking], 'could I have done more?' You know, what else could I have done?"

On one such occasion he contacted the coroner and was relieved to learn a female patient he lost could not have been saved.

"I got through to the clerk of courts in Narrogin, they got the Coroner's report and it wouldn't have mattered if there was a surgeon on the spot, she was going to die anyway," he said.

The parents become your patients

He's also attended suicides of people he knew.

"You can switch off when you don't know them — even with trauma accidents, if you don't know them," he said.

"But in the country you tend to get to know people and quite often you're dealing with people you do know or family of [people you know].

"You're thinking 'why, why the bloody hell did he do it, why, why, why' and the parents are there and they're saying 'why, why, why' and you're trying to comfort them at the same time.

"They [the parents] actually become your patients then."

One job seared into his mind was a car accident in Boddington that killed the son of a fellow volunteer ambulance officer.

Terry Keys said the word that repeatedly runs through his mind when he attends suicides is 'why'. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

"He [the father] beat us out there actually," Mr Keys recalled.

"It was quite traumatic. You had to deal with the other two patients in the car plus you had to keep an eye on him [the father].

"I wouldn't want to be turning up to my daughter's fatal accident."

The chill of the emergency helicopter blades

Mr Keys's daughter, Helen, said having a volunteer ambulance officer as a father had taken a toll.

"I guess you do grow up [fast], like no other people are exposed to that, to death [as a] constant," she said.

Helen Keys is immensely proud of the life of service her dad has lived. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

"Every time I see the helicopter come in at work [in Perth] I think, 'which small country town is just about to go, or is going, through the worst thing that they could possibly go through?'

"That helicopter doesn't go out just for random events."

Penny Keys still calls her former husband to debrief when she hears he has been to a traumatic job.

Helen Keys said her dad had missed family dinners because of his ambulance service, but she was immensely proud of his volunteering and his military service.

"When we were little kids… we would sit on the side of the road under the fig tree waiting for dad to march by [in the Anzac Day parade]. How exciting… to see your dad march by," she said.

"No-one else's dad did as much as our dad."

Terry Keys also volunteered at 28 annual junior Legacy kids camps as a medic and cook.

Legacy is a veterans' organisation supporting the spouses and children of deceased servicemen and women.

His eldest daughter Phillipa Keys said her dad was often stopped in the street by people who attended the camps as children, wanting to reminisce.

A life of service leaves its scars

Terry Keys has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifested at his day job at a mine in Boddington.

"I was wearing a breathing apparatus mask, you know I used to do the rescue stuff, and one day I put it on … and just something triggered it," he said.

"That was 38 years afterwards.

"It just took me back to an incident [in a tunnel] in Vietnam and that triggered it."

But he was keen to stress being an ambulance officer was not all "doom and gloom".

Terry Keys said he has had a good life and continuing to serve as a volunteer ambulance officer is his way of giving back. ( ABC News: Andrew O'Connor )

"Only a small percentage is trauma-related … a lot of patients you take are not actually that sick sometimes," he said.

"There is the good side of things, you come away from some jobs really feeling good that you've helped this person and got them to better care."

When Mr Keys moved to the South West town of Dunsborough a couple of years ago, joining the local ambulance sub-centre meant making instant friends.

"I have a pretty good social life with our group, it's a good group and I'm still helping. I've had a pretty good life, health and financial, so I can give back," he said.

"I enjoy doing it and helping somebody. It keeps me active and mobile, it keeps the brain ticking over a bit."

Recently he attended a surfing accident at Yallingup and a crowd of people clapped Mr Keys and his fellow officers off the beach.

"[There were] 100 people on the beach and as we sort of walked back up to the steps they all clapped," he recalled.

"It was quite an emotional end."

Terry Keys turned 75 on Friday and plans to "come off the road" as an ambulance officer next year.

But it won't be the end of his service — someone needs to wash the ambulance vehicles.