World War II Honoree

Frank A. Gleason

Branch of Service

U.S. Army

Hometown

Scranton, Pennsylvania

Honored By

Charles Henry Atkinson

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. 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 was subsequently assigned to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) headquarters in Chungking, China where he spent several months training Thai troops. He was 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. one of those duties was in January, 1944 resulting in the destruction of a bridge over the Yellow River, east of Loyang, China. in March, 1944, all Army officers were withdrawn from Camp 3.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.