Thomas C. Cock – Colonel, United States Air Force

From a contemporary press report

Retired Colonel Thomas C. Cock, a medical doctor who is believed to be the last World War II combat veteran to retire from the Air Force, died January 27, 2005, in Washington state. He was 79.

Cock served 45 years in the military, starting — he told United Press International in a 1991 interview — with World War II, which he called the “moral war” and ending as American troops began the buildup for the Persian Gulf War.

Cock started out aboard B-24 Liberators, but after the war, pursued a medical degree.

His son, Thomas Jr., said his father had roles in “many missions, including the care of the Iranian hostages in 1981.”

At that time, he was chief of hospital services at the Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, and so supervised the treatment of the 52 American hostages who had been held by Iran for more than a year.

Cock, who joined the Army Air Forces in 1943, retired from the Air Force on November 9, 1990.

tccocksr-gravesite-photo-august-2006

COCK, THOMAS CHARLES SR

  • COL   US AIR FORCE
  • WORLD WAR II
  • DATE OF BIRTH: 07/24/1925
  • DATE OF DEATH: 01/27/2005
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 54  SITE 3804
    ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

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