Oral History Interview with Frank Gleason, May 10, 2001

Transcript of an oral interview with Colonel (Ret.) Frank Gleason. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on September 20, 1920. After graduation from Penn State, he was commissioned into the Army in 1942. His first assignment was to Fort Belvoir, Virginia as the leader of a platoon of African-American soldiers. In 1943 he was recruited into the Office of Stregic Services (OSS) and sent to a camp outside of Frederick, Maryland (later Camp David). His duties there included training agents in heavy duty demolitions, explosives and booby traps. His next assignment was temporary duty to London for six weeks and training in sabotage and underwater demolition. He recalls that, upon arriving in London, he delivered a crate of fresh fruit to Major General Dwight Eisenhower. He was subsequently assigned to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) headquarters in Chungking, China where he spent several months training Thai troops. Captain Merry Miles assigned him as Executive Officer to the SACO unit at Camp 3 in Linju, China. The mission was to train guerillas in demolition, small arms, scouting, patrolling and other duties as assigned. He recounts one of those duties in January, 1944 resulting in the destruction of a bridge over the Yellow River, east of Loyang, China. He relates that soon a schism developed between the OSS and SACO, and in March, 1944, all Army officers were withdrawn from Camp 3. He was transferred back to SACO headquarters in Chungking, where he worked under General Dai Li as the Commander of Advance Base 21, located in Kweilin, China until the summer of 1944, when the Japanese forced their withdrawal. His next assignment was to block the road from Indochina to North China and during a three month period, his unit destroyed more than 150 bridges. His unit next destroyed 50,000 tons of weapons that were being hoarded for later use by the Communists. In March, 1945 he was transferred back to the United States and assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers. He retired from the Army in 1971