Story highlights John Fer: Telling a service member, "Thanks for your service" doesn't do much

Civilians should say, "Thank you for your sacrifice" instead, he writes

John Fer is a retired Air Force colonel and Vietnam POW. This is part of the "First time I knew I wanted to serve" series. 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. He was released March 4, 1973, during "Operation Homecoming." The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) In his second inaugural address, as the American Civil War was coming to a close, President Abraham Lincoln committed Americans "to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan," and in so doing reminded us of the need to recognize and honor the men and women who are America's veterans.

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. But somewhere along the way, appreciation of our sacrifices has become diluted.

John Fer

The importance of honoring our veterans, although legislatively diminished in spirit by enactment of the Uniform Holiday Bill in 1968, ought not to distract us from the eternal requirement to keep November 11 as our day of recollection and gratitude for those who selflessly served our great nation -- some of whom are not free of the physical, mental or psychological wounds that constrain them.

For many, these wounds are not readily visible: PTSD, alcoholism, suicide (estimated at an average of 20 deaths per day, a rate that is 21% higher for adult veterans than of adult non-veterans), divorce (during incarceration, some of my POW comrades were divorced by wives at home who would not wait for repatriation), unemployment, loss of a spiritual connection, drug abuse, and homelessness.

Fortunately, I had no difficulty adjusting when I was released after spending nearly six years in confinement. First, I was a bachelor and did not have the anxious feelings of the POW married/family men. After convalescence, I resumed my military career in school and then went back to doing what I loved: flying.

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