7 years in Hanoi: Retired captain reflects on time as Airman POW (Art Cormier)

Graduates from one of Lackland’s last Officer Candidate School classes, including an honorary class member and former Vietnam prisoner of war, reunited here to commemorate their 50th-year anniversary.

Members of OCS Class 62-A, which graduated Sept. 22, 1961, were honored as special guests during the Sept. 23 Air Force Basic Military Training graduation parade.

Among the class members and spouses in attendance was retired Air Force Capt. Art Cormier, an honorary OCS class member and former enlisted POW who spent seven years incarcerated in Hanoi. Cormier, who never graduated from OCS, washed out after about three months.

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It was December 26, 1972. The vibration from bombs exploding in the distance resonated through the walls of the North Vietnamese prison. In his cell, an American pilot peered through the barred windows where he saw the silhouette of a B-52 Stratofortress in flames. He could only watch as the

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