We no longer have with us eyewitnesses to the signing of the Armistice at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the end of World War I. But there were some accounts from local servicemen as they returned home after the war. That was before the first official Armistice Day, called Veterans Day since 1954 and which will be observed Nov. 11. Harold F. Wood, a former Gainesville mail carrier, witnessed the surrender of the German naval fleet at Rosyth in the North Sea.