Major General John K. Singlaub's World
War II duties included an OSS parachute mission into
occupied France to organize, train and lead a French
Resistance unit which provided assistance to the allied
invasion forces. He then went to China to train and
lead Chinese guerrillas against the Japanese. Just
before the Japanese surrender, he led a parachute
rescue mission behind enemy lines which resulted in
the surrender of an enemy Prisoner of War camp and
the subsequent release of 400 Allied prisoners.
General Singlaub was assigned as Chief
of a U.S. Military Liaison Mission to Mukden, Manchuria,
where he served for three years immediately following
World War II. He served two tours during the Korean
war, one with the CIA in Korea and the other as an
infantry battalion commander.
General Singlaub served also as commander
of the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force (MACVSOG)
in Vietnam, and later served as the Assistant Division
Commander of the 8th Infantry Division in Germany.
He served as the Chief of Staff, United
Nations Command, United States Forces, Korea, and
the Eighth U.S. Army in Seoul, Korea. Concomitantly,
he served as the U.N. Commander Senior Military Member
of the Military Armistice Commission at Panmunjom.
Interspersed with the above wartime
command positions were numerous training assignments
both at home and abroad. General Singlaub was instrumental
in the establishment of the Ranger Training Center
at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he also served as
an instructor. He helped establish the Modern Army
Selected Systems Test, Evaluation and Review activity
at Fort Hood, Texas. He was designated the Commander
responsible for training and combat-readiness of the
Army Reserve and Army National Guard Units in a ten-state
area. General Singlaub was also appointed Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
The General's 35 year military career
has frequently reflected vanguard military action,
having been awarded more than 33 military decorations
including the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak
Leaf Cluster, The Silver Star Medal, the Legion of
Merit with two Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Purple Heart
with Oak leaf Cluster.
Born July 10, 1921 in Independence,
California, General Singlaub is a graduate of the
University of California at Los Angeles where he was
Cadet Colonel of the ROTC. He graduated from the U.S.
Army Command and General Staff College, and subsequently
served as an instructor on its faculty. In addition,
he is a graduate of the Air War College.
Following retirement from the U.S. Army,
General Singlaub traveled extensively in the U.S.
and abroad lecturing on national security issues with
special emphasis on the requirements to maintain U.S.
forces in Korea and the need to upgrade and consolidate
the U.S. Special Operations Forces.
General Singlaub's career was chronicled
in his autobiography, Hazardous Duty - An
American Soldier in the Twentieth Century,
published in 1991 by Summit Books, a division of Simon
& Schuster. |