To most, it might have been a jumble of numbers, letters and code, but to Marie Brearley it was a message.
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A message that the Launceston, Tasmania, veteran will remember forever, even seven decades after she first received it.
Mrs Brearley was working as a telecommunications operator for the Royal Australian Navy during World War II and she was on shift when the message came through - the war was over.
"I was one of the people who handled the signal when it came through that war in the Pacific was over," she said.
"We handled a lot of messages but this one, we used code to tell us how important it was and this message had five markers on it, so we knew it was significant."
IN OTHER NEWS:
Mrs Brearley said she and her fellow telecommunications operators had to jam the signal down as many communication lines as possible, once they realised what they had.
"We had to drop everything and flood the system with this one message, to get it out there."
This year, on August 15, Victory in the Pacific, or VP Day marked 75 years since the end of the conflict.
VP Day is also known as VJ, or Victory over Japan, and commemorates Japan's acceptance of unconditional surrender to the Allied forces during World War II.
Mrs Brearley said she had worked most of her Navy career in telecommunications in Canberra and helped to send important and classified messages to Navy forces around the world.
She joined the Navy because she felt it was the right thing, and has a simple explanation: "It was war time."
"I wasn't one of the first 14 women to join the Navy but I certainly worked with them," she said.
"It was at a time when women had only just started joining the war effort."
Mrs Brearley was one of five World War II veterans who received an honorary medallion from the federal government last week for her service.
She was presented with a medallion by Member for Bass Bridget Archer at a ceremony at Launceston RSL.
Mrs Brearley's contribution has been deemed so significant, information about her role in delivering the peace message has been placed on the wall of the RSL.
She said receiving the medallion meant a great deal to her and she always had fond memories of her time in the Navy.
"I met some of my best friends there, you don't make friends the same way," she said.
The desire to join the military was a strong trait in Mrs Brearley's family, with her elder brother joining the Army and her younger brother joining the Air Force.
She said prior to that her family didn't have an active history of military service but she and her siblings all felt strongly about it.
"I always used to think of our poor mother," she said.
After the war ended, Ms Brearley spent some time living in Canberra, then she moved to Victoria where she met her husband.
He was then posted to Tasmania for work, and she followed.
The rest, they say is history, as the pair settled in Launceston to raise their family.
Mrs Brearley said she had fond memories of her war experience and had always maintained the friendships she made there, through her involvement with ex-service organisations like the RSL.