Kelsey Grammer feels a "sense of smallness" over never having served in the military.

The Frasier actor always tries to "show up" for the armed forces when he is able to because he wants to make up for the fact he never enlisted in his younger years.

He told Fox News Digital: "I will always have an annoying sort of sense of smallness that I didn't serve, but I do my best to make up for it."

However, the 71-year-old actor admitted he is unsure he'd have enlisted if given the opportunity to start his life over again.

He said: "It was a really interesting time."

Kelsey signed up for the draft when the Vietnam War was "sort of in full flair" and was ready to fight, though he is "thankful" he didn't get called up.

He said: "President Nixon pulled us out just before I would have gone down to get my number.

"So, I was thankful for not having to go, make that decision, but I would've gone. If my number had been up, I woulda gone. But I was, I was thankful not to."

Kelsey has Mason, 25, and Jude, 22, from his marriage to Camille Grammer and he has spoken to them regularly about the sacrifices others have made to protect America's safety and "will always try and instruct them with the idea that service to your country is a good idea."

However, while he would encourage them to enlist if they wanted to, "their mom would get mad at me".

He added: "There's a lot of wonderful patriotic people in our country today whose children and whose husbands and wives are serving, and my hat is off to them all. And we salute them. I mean, with this particular thing, the 11 hour, the 11 day, 11th month, Armistice Day originally, now Veterans Day at the end of the first World War. Remarkable. The number of people who died in that war.

"So, certainly the hope was that it would never happen again and, sure enough, a generation later, we were fighting World War II. Amazing. And we go on. We continue. Hopefully it'll end one day."

As a young actor, the Avengers: Doomsday star used to eat his lunch in a military cemetery and the graves he saw left him devastated.

He said: "I used to work in San Diego. It was one of my first jobs at the Shakespeare Festival there, and I would go over to the Point Loma Military Graveyard and have a lunch sometimes. And I'd sit next to this cross that I'd found of a young man who was really only eight months older than I was who had died in Vietnam. And it just broke my heart."