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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Hanoi releases 108 American POWs (Hubert Walker)

A gaunt but cheerful 108 American prisoners of war regained their freedom today, with the senior ranking prisoner in North Vietnam declaring the U.S. POWs “performed magnificently … they were first class soldiers.” “I would like to say I’ve been in better places but I have never been with better

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