Major General John K. Singlaub

 
 

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.

 
 

 


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