While Remembrance Day has taken place on November 11 for over 100 years, this year's service was different for veterans and the public alike, but still sent the same message of honour and respect.

"There's a number of my mates that have passed on. I come here just to remember them and the comradeship that I had when we were together," Mr Jago said.

Mr Jago signed up in Launceston to serve in the Pacific after his brother had already been sent off to Papua New Guinea. At his registration he met one other man who he went off to battle with.

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"We served together until after the war when he was posted to another section, but we both made it back home," he said.

"To sign up, it was a choice that I made. When you're young ... why not?"

Mr Jago served in the RAAF in the Pacific from 1943 to 1945 before he was posted in Japan at the end of the war.

Keeping busy had allowed Mr Jago to push most of the horrors of his time in the Pacific to the back of his mind, but in his old age, and as he slowed down, they popped up from time to time.

"I still have a counsellor. When you're young you keep yourself busy. When you get old there's too many things to poke back because you haven't got the up and go to ignore them. But I'm doing alright," he said.

"I know people who have gone back to Vietnam and those places, but it reminds me too much of jungles.

"I try to keep away from that place and keep it out of my head."

Mr Jago said other than remembering his friends on November 11, it gave him the chance to talk to young people and recapture his youth.

"I always like talking to young people because that part of my life went ... I didn't have it," he said.

Launceston RSL sub branch president, retired Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Barnett said previous veteran events had only gone ahead in a diminished capacity, and that the day finally offered veterans a chance to remember their fallen mates.

"It's one of the most important days for paying our respects," he said.

"Everyone made sure we were ready for today."

But Mr Barnett said the day was about more than just that.

"It gives veterans a chance to catch up, but it's also our chance to remember the sacrifices. We know what the sacrifices were, we've been there ... and you don't [normally] talk about it, but you do talk about it with your mates," he said.

"That's the archetypal Australian male ... 'Tell 'em nothing, take 'em nowhere, I'm alright Jack'.

"I suffer from PTSD, and if I hadn't been talking to my mates who said, 'you've gotta do this, this and this' ... God knows where I'd be today."

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