Fer was shot down on his 54th combat mission by North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles on February 4, 1967, while engaged in an electronic countermeasures mission. He spent more than six years as a POW in camps in and around Hanoi, frequently in solitary confinement or isolation. That became the genesis of what we now know as Veterans Day, November 11, a day that had its birth with President Woodrow Wilson's proclamation of November 11, 1919, as the first commemoration of Armistice Day. It fell to later generations to officially establish November 11 as Veterans Day, honoring veterans from all of America's wars. First, I was a bachelor and did not have the anxious feelings of the POW married/family men.

Source: CNN October 28, 2017 21:00 UTC