Interview with John MacIndoe [June 17, 2002]

Janet Beik:

This is an interview with John MacIndoe in State College, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 2002. My name is Janet Beik. I'm a student at the National War College. We'll record your name...

John MacIndoe:

This is John MacIndoe in State College, Pennsylvania, who served in the United States Army from 1942 to 1972. I served during World War II, the Korean War and the war in Vietnam.

Janet Beik:

And your highest rank in the service...

John MacIndoe:

I retired as a Colonel.

John MacIndoe:

I came into the Army through ROTC from Perm State. I was given my commission as a second lieutenant, United States Army Reserve on 8 May 1942 upon being graduated from Penn State with a BS in chemistry. At the same time it was announced that I had won the Honor Graduate selection as an officer in the Regular Army. This was the result of a competition held during the spring term. (Actual date of transfer to the Regular Army was 7 October 1942.) On the 18th of May 19421 reported for duty at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. After a couple of weeks there, I was transferred to Camp Croft, South Carolina, which was an infantry replacement training center. I spent several months there training recruits and then I was sent to Fort Benning to The Infantry School for the basic class. I came back to Camp Croft and was made a company commander and stayed there until September of 1943, when I was transferred to the 100th Division at then-Camp Jackson, South Carolina. And from there we went to maneuvers in Tennessee, after which I was sent to Fort Benning for the advanced class at The Infantry School. At the end of that time, I was sent overseas as a replacement. I was in England until the invasion and then I went on the continent and joined the 9th Infantry Division as a staff officer in the 1st Battalion of the 60th Infantry in the 9th Division.

Janet Beik:

If we could go back and talk about your training. Why did you pick the Army?

John MacIndoe:

I chose the Army because I always wanted to go to West Point, but my family's politics didn't agree with those of our representatives so this was the only opportunity I had to get into the Army.

Janet Beik:

Can you describe your training and your experiences, what boot camp was like?

John MacIndoe:

Well, of course, I didn't go to boot camp. When I was a teenager, I went to what was then called a Citizens' Military Training Camp for a couple of summers. This was where they took young boys sixteen and older for thirty days and put them through recruit training. The program called for four years after which you took an examination. If you passed, you were given a commission as a second lieutenant in the reserve. My CMTC days were interrupted by my attending college. I had four years of ROTC, during which time we studied military science and we did drilling and so forth when the weather was right. Between our junior and senior years, we went to camp for a month and had first-hand experience in firing all the various weapons, and hiking and all that sort of thing.

Janet Beik:

Did your training experience prepare you well for actually going over to the war?

John MacIndoe:

Well, of course after I was on active duty, as I said, I went to the basic class at Fort Benning, which was designed for lieutenants and captains, platoon leaders and company commanders. It served me very well when I eventually got into combat.

Janet Beik:

We'll talk first about World War II. What do you remember as your most significant experience during the Second World War?

John MacIndoe:

There were many experiences, some humorous, some not so humorous. As I said, I was made the operations officer, the S3 of the 1st Battalion of the 60th Infantry. In early September, we got into Germany, actually the 13th of September, and we were involved in fighting in the Huertgen Forest for about six and a half weeks. It was a rather rugged battle! During that time, I was, as I said, the staff officer. At the end of that campaign, around Thanksgiving time, we had a new regimental commander and apparently he thought of me, "This guy is a Regular Army officer and if he's going to have a career in the Army, he'd better have some command experience..." So just a day or two before Thanksgiving, I was made commander of A Company of the 60th Infantry, which job I held until the end of the war in May of 1945. During that time, we had many, many battles. Fortunately, we didn't lose too many men. I only lost one officer, although I lost several other NCO's who were platoon leaders acting as officers. I think perhaps the most exhilarating time of the war was when we got across the Remagen Bridge before it collapsed and we were able to hold the bridge head until so many people got over, and that really was the end of the war. From then on, it was... we had practically no casualties and we kept chasing the Germans and looking forward to the days when we could go to bed and not have to worry about what was going to happen during the night.

Janet Beik:

Were you awarded any medals or citations?

John MacIndoe:

I was awarded the silver star, several bronze stars and four purple hearts while I was with the battalion.

Janet Beik:

How did you get them?

John MacIndoe:

Various ways. In April 1945 in the vicinity of Friedrukbrunn, Germany, I led my company with supporting tanks in an attack against a strong enemy position on a wooded mountain top. The company and tanks were deployed as a line of skirmishers and assaulting up the mountain. I was directing the attack from the top of a tank and firing its 50-caliber machine gun and was knocked off twice by enemy rocket fire. I was not hurt badly and resumed my position and soon we overran the enemy position killing many enemy, taking 79 prisoners and capturing a medical depot full of dental supplies. Our casualties were five wounded. For that I think I was awarded the silver star.

Janet Beik:

How did you plan for the battles?

John MacIndoe:

You didn't have much time to plan for the battles, for the most part. As we were going across Belgium and into Germany, we would go pretty fast during the day. Late in the afternoon, usually we'd encounter a German strong point and that would cause us to deploy and take us practically until dark to reduce the German position to get them to withdraw. And as they would be departing, another battalion would pass through us and chase them and then we'd have time to get some supper and get ready for the next day. Some time during the night, the regimental S3, the regimental commander would issue instructions for the next day. So we had very little time to make detailed plans as to what we were going to do. Detailed plans weren't really necessary because we were kind of chasing the Germans. Later in the Huertgen Forest, particularly, the plans were made very meticulously, several days in advance, and everybody knew down to the last man, what he was supposed to do. A lot of times, you encountered a situation where you didn't have time to make plans and you just had to go by the seat of your pants and from your experience and take care of the situation as things developed. We did have one memorable battle in the town of Dreiborn in February of 1945. We were trying to capture the Schwammenauel of the Ruhr Dams. My battalion was to attack, to capture this town of Dreiborn. Well, the plan was made that we would attack during darkness. There was still about six inches of snow on the ground and we finally got our snow suits. Incidentally, we were fighting without any snow suits while the Germans had them. It made quite a difference for a while. Anyhow, everyone had his white snow suit on and at 4:00 in the morning we started down towards Dreiborn. My company was on the right of the road, and B Company, I think, was on the left of the road. We were firing artillery into Dreiborn, and the fires that started gave us enough illumination that we could see what was going on. We overcame several German 88-millimeter guns' positions which were at that point in place for dual purpose - anti-tank and anti-air. And we captured these while they were asleep. We went on into town and got a foothold in the town, brought the tanks up and we moved through the town, using infantry and tanks -- to great effect. By daylight, almost -- a little after daylight, we captured the whole town, including the battalion commander and his staff that had been defending it.

Janet Beik:

How was the coordination with the other units?

John MacIndoe:

Coordination was usually from right to left. If you were attacking with units abreast, contact was usually by eye or by runner. Radio communication was not always reliable. I don't remember but one instance when we had another division on our flank, and we were supposed to maintain contact with them, but for some reason we got way ahead of them and we had a little trouble. They thought at one point some of our people were Germans. But that didn't take long to get squared away. It was usually by runner and down at the level of the company.

Janet Beik:

While you were serving in World War II, how did you stay in touch with your family?

John MacIndoe:

I wrote to my family, to my wife and one child, I think almost every day -sometimes using message blanks, using v-mail. I got mail from them. I didn't get it every day, but I got it in batches that ended up, if you checked it out, it would have been almost every day. That was the only way we had.

Janet Beik:

Could you describe a little bit about what living there was like - the food and your conditions...

John MacIndoe:

The food in combat... for the most part, was what were called C-rations or K-rations. When the situation permitted, which was maybe less than half the time, our kitchens, which were back in the rear under central control of our supply officer, would bring up prepared meals - hot meals, and in the winter-time, a change of socks. A change of socks was part of the program to reduce trench foot, which in some units was a great, great problem, but it was not in ours. But whenever you got a hot meal, regardless of what it was, it was very welcome. I remember our mess sergeant was quite innovative. We had lots of canned marmalade and canned -- I think it was cherry -- preserves, and when they'd bring up hotcakes -pancakes - he had made a syrup of marmalade and cherry preserves and that ersatz butter we had. But it was warm! Being the company commander, I always ate last. The food, was brought up in these thermal containers. By the time I got my turn, the pancakes remaining were on the bottom and they were very soggy. So to this day, I detest pancakes. I carried, in my pocket, several of what we called D-rations, which were nothing more than fortified chocolate bars. They were treated with something -1 don't know exactly how to say it, they weren't just chocolate bars, they had other things in them. But by carrying them in my inside pocket - in the winter-time, I wore two pairs of trousers, and a pair of long Johns under that ~ but I carried one candy bar in each of my front pockets and a couple in my back pockets, and I subsisted, oh, I would say 35 or 40 percent of my time on those chocolate bars. At the end of the war ~ I had gone in at about 170 pounds, and at the end, on V-E day, I got weighed and I was 204, as solid as a rock.

Janet Beik:

What did you and your troops do when you went on leave?

John MacIndoe:

I was given a leave, what they called an R and R, to Paris the 1st of February in 1945. I was in charge of the truckload of soldiers, I think there were twenty of us, and we went back to Paris. There were places for the enlisted men, very nice hotels and so forth and the Red Cross, and then there were separate hotels for the officers. Except for the Red Cross, where I understand they had dances on a daily basis, I'm sure there was a USO but I never saw them. The soldiers were just pretty much on their own to do what they wanted to until a particular day and a particular hour, which was three days after we got there, they were to assemble at a certain point to return.

Janet Beik:

Did you lose anyone? Did everybody come back?

John MacIndoe:

Never lost a one. However, we had a... To go back to what I did, when I got there, the first thing I did was look up the quartermaster's sales store and got a clean, new uniform. But when we were leaving Paris, after our three days there, all the men were there. We were driving, I can't recall exactly, but we were maybe twenty miles out of the center of the city, and a French truck went through a stop sign and hit the right front of our truck. Well, it didn't incapacitate the truck, but it made it awfully difficult to drive. So we limped along until we got to Reims. It's a big town and it's the center of the champagne district. We got there and found an ordnance repair unit. Also there was a finance officer and there were several big hospitals in the area, so we had an extra two days there while they fixed our truck. The finance officer gave everybody that wanted it a partial pay. I think the soldiers tried every type of champagne that was made in the area.

Janet Beik:

What did you think of your fellow officers?

John MacIndoe:

For the most part, they were excellent. We only had one incident that occurred before I was a company commander. On the 20th of September, we got twelve new officers in, and the battalion commander told me to take them off to one side and brief them. There was one captain and one first lieutenant and the rest were all second lieutenants fresh out of OCS. So, the adjutant came over after I was done briefing them, and based on the needs of the companies, assigned them. Then he had the runners, who were with the battalion from each company, take these people to their assigned companies. One of these lieutenants was sent to C Company and taken to a platoon to which he was assigned. He asked the platoon sergeant where to go to the bathroom and the sergeant motioned to the woods. So the lieutenant went into the woods and was not seen again. During the Battle of the Bulge, the absent lieutenant was picked up in Belgium as a deserter. He was later tried but I never heard the results. That's the only incident of this type that I can recall in my battalion.

Janet Beik:

Are there any other memories of World War II you'd like to share before we move on to Korea?

John MacIndoe:

I had a runner whose names was Claude Edwards, a hillbilly from Galax, Virginia. He was known as "Eddards" because that's the way he pronounced his name. He always wore a field jacket and in that jacket he carried practically anything anyone wanted - chewing tobacco, C-rations, filthy pictures - anything. As the war was ending I told him I was going to make him jeep driver and he said, "Hell, Mac, I can't drive, I ain't never drove anything." He made a good driver later. One day the regimental commander, Colonel John G. Van Houten, came for an inspection and he asked Eddards, "Son, what is the name of your company commander?" Eddards answered, "Hell Colonel, I don't know. I just call him Mac!" Just at the end of the war I was moved from being a company commander to become the regimental S-3, the plans and operations officer. Shortly after that General Westmoreland, then Colonel Westmoreland, arrived to command the regiment. That summer we did a lot of training on old German training grounds, some of which we reactivated, to wit: Hohenfels. In September of 1945, Colonel Westmoreland moved me to take over the 3rd Battalion and I held command of it until I came home in February 1946. We had a lot of turmoil right after the war with great numbers of the veterans in the Ninth Division qualifying to be sent home. Only the Regular Army Officers and other volunteers were to remain in the occupation force initially. All the vacancies in our units thus created were filled by personnel from divisions that had only recently arrived in Europe from the States and had only limited combat. This caused many problems since these new members of the units saw no reason not to fraternize with the local people, whereas the veterans had fought the Germans and shied away from them for the most part. I came home on Rest and Recuperation (R&R) leave for six weeks in February 1946. My family received a port call while I was at home to move to Germany. I was able to make arrangement so that we went back on the same ship, my wife, my son and myself. There were about thirty of us officers on the ship going back with our families, but it was immoral for us to live with them, so they put the officers down in the hold in a big dormitory, and the women and children had the cabins up above. We got back to Germany in May and went back to Ingolstadt where my battalion was. But the new regimental commander had given the battalion to someone else. Meanwhile, after about a week, I was moved to Division Headquarters to be the Assistant G3, and my family moved to Augsburg. We were in Augsburg until May of 1947. We had many wonderful experiences with a lot of other families that came over, but also we got to meet some of the Germans that had not been on the Nazi side. We had a very enjoyable time.

Janet Beik:

Then after that, between World War II and Korea, did you come back to the U.S.?

John MacIndoe:

We came back to the U.S. in the summer of 1947 and I was assigned to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, where I was a member of the faculty. I was on the attack committee, and we were teaching officers and NCOs small unit tactics in platoons and companies. During that time, I was a technical director for a couple of training films made by professional movie makers. I had just been told I was going to spend a fourth year at Fort Benning when the Korean War broke out, and the next week I had orders to proceed towards Korea.

Janet Beik:

Where did you go in Korea?

John MacIndoe:

I received orders that said "You will proceed..." ~ this was on the 17th of August - "You will proceed without delay to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, reporting there by 25 August without repeat without family and without repeat without household goods." And so I went to Fort Sheridan and was there for about ten days, during which time we went through all the preparatory firing exercises and medical shots and so on. Then we went to a camp near Pittsburg, CA to form IX Corps Headquarters. We went to the aerial port very early in September, I've forgotten the dates right now. We flew to Japan. When we flew to Japan, we found out that the advance party that had been our corps commander and twenty of the other senior officers had gone ahead and gone over, and had taken over I Corps and the people in I Corps were sent back to Pusan to wait for EX Corps to come in. It was an awful strange situation. When we got to Japan, eight of us were sent to Korea and transferred from IX Corps into I Corps. We spent the rest of the war in I Corps headquarters where I was Assistant G3. That was in September. In December, while we were withdrawing from the Chinese coming in the North, I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and I was then made the Operations Chief in the G3 section. I had that until I came home in December of 1951.

Janet Beik:

What exactly did you do as G3?

John MacIndoe:

My main job was to run the operations center, keep the maps posted, pass the orders the Corps Commander had approved that were developed by the plans section, and pass the orders on down to the divisions. And then, on a daily basis, I would send some of my operations officers in vehicles to visit the various divisions, to see if we could be of any assistance, to see that things were going as had been planned and so forth. Mostly just keeping abreast. Later, for reasons I don't know, I became the briefing officer. Whenever we got any VEPs in, I was called on to do the briefing. General Ridgeway came in as the new Eighth Army Commander and he moved his headquarters in on top of ours, and I had to brief him every morning. He was very meticulous, and we learned that very quickly. One morning, I was briefing and I said, "The 15th Infantry sent patrols across the Han River at this point last night in boats." He stopped me and he said, "Assault boats?" "Yes, sir." "Wooden or rubber?" I said, "I don't know, sir, but I'll find out." Well, the Chief of Staff, who was General Renaldo Van Brunt would stand in the back of the room, and when I would make a mistake, he'd put up a big X with his fingers. So this went on for about five or six weeks. In the meantime, General Van Brunt had told me if I got through one morning without any problems, he'd send me on leave to Japan. So one morning I reported that one of the regiments of the 25th Division had come under anti-tank fire the day before. And General Ridgeway said, "How the hell do you know it was anti-tank fire?" I said, "Sir, they knocked out the gun and here's one of the shells." And that afternoon, I was on a plane to Japan. Another thing that was very memorable - when the Chinese agreed to talk, to set up a talk at Panmunjom.... for reasons I'll never know, I was sent (I understand at the direction of General Ridgeway) to go up to the first ROK division, that's the Republic of Korea division, and take command of the 11th Regiment that was astride the road leading to Panmunjom. I was to take command of the regiment and attack to the west, and take the high ground overlooking Panmunjom. We were not to fire any shots. Meanwhile, they had sent word down to the advisors to the first ROK division what I was going to do. Somehow they got word to Colonel Moon (who was commanding the regiment) and the American advisor to that regiment. I got there, and at first they were not going to let me do it, and I said, "Well, all I'm going to do is to tell you what to do." So I issued the orders. All the ammunition was taken away from the troops, and the assault units fixed bayonets. The Chinese were on that high ground to the west. We started attacking up the high ground with the bayonets fixed, and the Chinese withdrew! There was never a shot fired! I came home in December of 1951. As an interim assignment, I went to Indiantown Gap (PA), a training center, and became Chief of the Division Faculty. I was in charge of all the faculty made up of veterans from Korea, and we trained recruits. I had that job for nine months and then I went to school at Fort Leavenworth, the Command and General Staff College. After a year, I was assigned to Continental Army Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and assigned to the G4 section. This headquarters was in the process of formulating new doctrine and new organization for logistics in the communication zone. It had been decided there was a need for someone who didn't have the stigma of a G4 attached to him. I had been from G3 all the time. So I spent three and a half years there involved in the developing of several different organizational concepts, one of which is, I think, still in use today. At the end of that time, in February of 1957,1 went over to Norfolk to the Armed Forces Staff College, after which I went to Fort Benning to the 3rd Infantry Division which was preparing to go overseas in what they called a gyro operation to replace a division already over there. Because I had been in G4 at Fort Monroe at CONARC, the Division Commander of the 3rd Division made me the G4, with the promise that, if we got everybody to Germany okay, I could go down to command troops. We got the division to Germany okay, and I went to him and I said, "Remember you told me I could go down to troops," and he said, "Oh, oh, oh... well, but I need you as G4 longer." Fortunately, he was transferred to Turkey shortly after that, and we got a new division commander, who asked me how I was qualified to be G4, and I said, "Because, sir, I think it was because I went to Fort Leavenworth." And so I said, "I was promised troops." He said, "Do you want to go to troops?" I said, "Yes," and within a week I was Deputy Commander of the 30th Infantry. I stayed in that job from October 1958 until November of 1959, at which time I was transferred to USAEUR headquarters in the G3 section for just six weeks, and then I went over as G3 Plans Officer in Central Army Group, a NATO organization. I was there until I came back to the States in June of 1961 to attend the National War College.

Janet Beik:

Was your family with you in Germany?

John MacIndoe:

My family was with me in Germany. My wife, my son and daughter first lived in Wuerzburg, then we went to Schweinfurt, and then we went to Heidelberg.

Janet Beik:

What was it like living in Germany after having been there during the war?

John MacIndoe:

It was very enjoyable. When we first went there, it was very enjoyable because we were in a university town, and it was a very agreeable atmosphere. When we went to Schweinfurt, it was a labor town, entirely different atmosphere. Then, of course, we went to Heidelberg, and there we were back again. Both of us having been graduates of a university and my wife's family, too -- her father was a professor at Perm State for 40 years. In that atmosphere it was great; we just felt more at home. When we first got to Wuerzburg, they had a German/American women's club. After the Germans became independent in 1955, there developed quite a social closeness between the German women and the American women. My wife was asked and she said she would accept the position of American president of the German/American Women's Club, so long as she had a deputy so there would be two of them. It worked out that way. They had an enjoyable time. My son remembered his German from when he was in Germany in 1946-47. Back then he got lost a couple times because he was a tow-head and he looked like a German, and he sounded like one. My daughter learned German very quickly, early during our second tour. At the end of my year at the National War College, an assignment I shall cherish forever, I was assigned to be Commander of the 2nd Battle Group of the 39th Infantry Regiment at Fort Lewis, Washington. I was only there for fourteen months and was then returned to Washington (DC) and assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCSOPS) in the Pentagon. I was made Deputy Chief of the Plans Division. After one year I was transferred to the Joint Staff as part of the Chairman's Special Study Group. We did various studies on future strategies and doctrines to cope with the changing world situation. Many of these studies were in response to ideas put forth by the Secretary of Defense. I spent three and one-half years on this assignment. In January 1967,1 received orders to go to Vietnam to be head of the Psychological Warfare Directorate in MACV Headquarters. In preparation I spent one month at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute learning about counterinsurgency and another month at Fort Bragg at the Special Forces School for more training in psychological warfare. I reported to General Westmoreland's MACV headquarters in March 1967 and spent one year there.

Janet Beik:

Were you at headquarters the whole time, or did you get out to travel?

John MacIndoe:

I operated out of headquarters visiting psyops personnel in the corps and divisions and the psyops units attached to those forces. During my tour there I was invited to Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to give talks on counterinsurgency and discuss our psyops operations in Vietnam. I also attended a counterinsurgency/psyops conference in Korea and visited the 15th PsyOps Group in Japan.

Janet Beik:

Were those training missions?

John MacIndoe:

For the most part, yes, although some of my staff joked about it. When I left Vietnam for the States, I was presented with a caricature of me holding my suitcase and reading a document that said, 'THANKS FROM THE GRATEFUL PEOPLE OF MALAYSIA, THAILAND, KOREA, JAPAN and South Vietnam!" I returned to the States in April 1968 and was assigned to the faculty of the National War College, where I spent the next three and one-half years. In the summer of 1971, I was moved to the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army, where I did special projects until I was retired on 1 July 1972.

Janet Beik:

How would you compare your experiences in the war itself in Vietnam to Korea, and even to World War II? It must have been very different.

John MacIndoe:

Well, of course my job in these two areas was entirely different. In Korea, I was involved in combat operations with guns, tanks and airplanes. In Vietnam, I was heading a staff that was trying to persuade the people on the other side to give up and come over to our side - whether it be by pamphlet, by loudspeaker or leaflets from the air. We eventually got a radio station up at Pleiku. We also got radio receivers which were embedded in a one-foot styro cube with extra batteries and dumped out over the Viet Cong areas from airplanes. It must have worked because they tried to knock out our radio station several times. Many Viet Cong did turn themselves in, but we rarely could tell which of our efforts was responsible. But my experiences... it was an entirely different focus. Of course, the Commander in Chief Westmoreland always thought we should get more of the enemy to come over. When General Johnson, the Army Chief of Staff, would come over, he would ask, "Why don't you just draw more pictures?" Well, believe it or not, with the Vietnamese artists we had, we tried to get them to draw pictures of Oriental people for the pamphlets, but they didn't want to make "slant eyes", they wanted to make "round eyes"! It was a constant fight. It was strange, too, but that's the way they felt.

Janet Beik:

In terms of the officers and the troops that you've worked with, how would you compare the different experiences?

John MacIndoe:

Well of course, in Korea, I was so far back from the front lines.... The officers I had were very devoted. When it was their turn to go out and visit the troops right up on the front lines, they were very happy to go. Of course, they were very happy to be able to come back and sleep in a warm bed that night, too. In Vietnam, the people in the loudspeaker and leaflet companies in the Psy Ops Battalion were very devoted to their work. These kids with the loudspeakers would go right out in the front lines with the troops and when they'd start speaking on the loudspeaker, if they were too close to where the sound was coming from, they were subject to fire.

Janet Beik:

They were in combat...

John MacIndoe:

Yes, to help protect them they got longer wires so they could get farther away from the loudspeakers. From where I was, I saw no evidence of anything but complete attention to duty. In Korea, when we started to move back from our northernmost position in North Korea, everybody was still in summer uniforms. I'm not sure whether the winter uniforms had gotten up close enough to us to send up yet or not, but every bit of transportation that was available was being used for ammunition, and for food. At one point up there, back at Corps headquarters, we were down to two meals a day because of the limitations. I remember one of the members of G4 went up to talk to some troops about the new boots that were coming in. This kid pulled up his shoes, and said, "I hope so," he says, "I can't find enough cardboard to keep the hole filled in the sole of my boot!" If there were any desertions, I never heard of them.

Janet Beik:

Is there anything else, either from Korea or Vietnam, that you'd like to add for the record? Any memorable experiences?

John MacIndoe:

In Korea, we dealt with the Republic of Korea forces, of course, and we always had in our Corps the 1st ROK Division. We had - at different times British brigades. In the first part there were just British and Scots and an Australian battalion in the 27th Brigade. Then came the 29th Independent Brigade Group and that was made up of representatives of practically everybody in the Commonwealth - South Africa, India, the whole works. They weren't hard to deal with. We also had the Turks. I've forgotten how many different nations' troops we had attached to I Corps. The policy of our Corps Commander was to attach these foreign units to American units. In the beginning, he didn't attach the Turkish Brigade, but later he did. When the Turks were first attached to I Corps, I was sent with a message to the Turkish commander and said, "The Corps Commander would like you to establish a defensive position here" (pointing to a map). He said, "Dja" and that meant "I heard you." He disregarded this request so a more senior officer visited the Turks and said, "You will by such and such a time... " He complied. That was the only case where we ever had any problems of that sort.

Janet Beik:

... working out the command instructions?

John MacIndoe:

Of course, the Turkish units and the Koreans had American advisors with them. The American advisors had problems with the Turks in the beginning. But the Turks were good. I remember one time, in January 1951, the Turks were attached to the 25th Division. They were attacking up a Chinese-held hill with fixed bayonets, and as the Turks got nearer, the Chinese took off and ran! In Vietnam, the only association I had with the foreign units was through the psychological warfare people. The Taiwanese had a 3-star general, a 2-star general, a 1-star general, and about four colonels. The Chinese psyops philosophy is the same as was espoused by the Vietnamese - you not only work on the enemy but you work on your own people to keep them loyal to you. The Taiwanese people were there to help train them how to do that. The Koreans had two captains who always wanted something - they wanted loudspeakers, they wanted special leaflets, 15,000 of them or 15 million of them, I've forgotten, because it got to be ridiculous. The Filipinos had an engineer regiment there. It was a combat engineers unit, but wasn't on the line. It occupied an area, and they had a liaison officer who worked out of my office. The Filipinos were dealing strictly in the hearts and minds of people!

Janet Beik:

A new concept at the time, wasn't it?

John MacIndoe:

Yes, it was to a lot of us, but I had quite a few officers who had been in psyops for some time. The fellow that commanded the 4th Psy Ops Battalion while I was in Vietnam did such an outstanding job that he was chosen later to be a student at the National War College -- Bill Beck.

Janet Beik:

We'll go on to your time after the service. You retired in...?

John MacIndoe:

I retired in 1972, and I felt lost. I worked around the garden, around the house, I was baking pies and doing errands for the women - my wife was teaching school and Kathe was off at college. Johnny was through Med School, he was at an internship. Finally, I went down to the Retired Officers' Association and found a job as a consultant to the Stanford Research Corporation, which was doing some studies for the Army. I was a political-military consultant. I was with them for almost two years, until all my friends left the Pentagon and I was no more use to them. So then I got a job, a very menial job, with Planning Research Corporation. The company had a contract with Drug Enforcement Administration. There were about 35 of us retirees -Army, Navy, Air Force, CIA, State Department - who were looking for something to occupy our time, and we were hired because of our security clearances. We would process reports from the field and analyze them, and incorporate the data into the computer. As I say, it was a menial job, but it kept us off the streets. After almost ten years, then they wanted to make me a supervisor, but I declined and retired. So then I reverted to full-time rose-growing. So that's what I've been doing ever since.

Janet Beik:

Have you kept in touch with people that you knew in the service?

John MacIndoe:

Not too much. One of my colleagues at the National War College retired just a little after the time I did and went to work at the Library of Congress as a Congressional researcher. He's living in Alexandria and his name is John Collins. I hear from him at least once a week as an addressee on philosophical papers on all sorts of aspects of the world crises, politics and everything else. Several of my best friends at the War College have since passed on. The remainder are scattered. I used to keep in touch until this year, when he died, with my executive officer when I was the A Company Commander during World War II. And until several years ago, with my old first sergeant, who was in charge of the FBI office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, until he died. From time to time, I've seen others but so many of them, particularly in World War II, got out of the service. In the Korean War... most of my contemporaries have passed on. One of the officers who I was with in Korea, and later we were together in the 3rd Division, Bob Odom -we correspond at Christmastime, but that's about all.

Janet Beik:

Have you joined veterans' organizations?

John MacIndoe:

I belong to the Retired Officers' Association, and the only other one I have joined, but I've never been to any meetings or anything, is the American Legion.

Janet Beik:

How have you found that your military service, and experiences, have affected your life? Obviously, it's a large portion of your career.

John MacIndoe:

Well, I find because of my experiences, during which I had traveled so much - I've been practically all over the world, except for Australia and New Zealand, people kind of look up to you and say, "You know about that, tell me about it" -that sort of thing. I have given two talks here recently based on World War II experiences. I talked to the Pennsylvania Historical group out at the museum near Boalsburg, on the Huertgen Forest Battle. That was last June. Then last October, I was one of group who talked about the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Those two are on tape. The only way I think it has helped me since I was retired, it's just broadened my scope, broadened my abilities. I'm not one of these people who wrote military histories or anything else. I wrote one paper when I was at the War College, which was accepted by George Washington (University) for my Master's thesis. As far as I know, it's never been published. There's a copy at the War College. And I spent twelve years as an editor of a rose society monthly newsletter.

Janet Beik:

Is there anything else you'd like to add that we haven't covered?

John MacIndoe:

Not that I can think of.

Janet Beik:

Thank you very much.

John MacIndoe:

You're most welcome.