Major General
Harlod B. Gibson Jr.
Major General Harold B.
Gibson, Jr., was born at Fort Riley, Kansas on October 27, 1923. He is a 1939 graduate of West End High School,
Nashville Tennessee, and attended Texas A&M University before enlisting in the Army in March 1943. He subsequently
attended the Paris Center, University of Maryland, and Syracuse University. Commissioned as an Engineer officer
at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in the fall of 1943, he served in New Guinea, Biak Island, the Philippines, and Japan
until 1946. He then accepted integration as Regular Army Ordnance Officer.
His early Ordnance assignments included tours at the Ordnance Center and School and the development, testing, inspection, and verification of new Ordnance materiel. Subsequent tours entailed implementing Marshall Plan provisioning of Ordnance materiel to the French Army, coordination of a program developing requirements for outfitting and providing materiel to the South Vietnamese Army, and a tour as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command. In later assignments, he was commander of Letterkenny Army Depot; Commanding Officer, U.S. Army Support Command, Saigon; Commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command in Germany; and Commander of the U.S. Army Theater Army Support Command in Europe. In this latter post, he had responsibility for all support at echelons above Corps, with control of several subordinate commands. In his last two postings, he was Director of Maintenance for the U.S. Army Materiel Command, where he revitalized and expanded the Field Maintenance Technician Program, and later served as Chief of Staff there.
Following his initial retirement in 1977, he was project manager and later vice president of Frank E. Basil, Inc., a worldwide diversified services firm through which he provided facility operation, maintenance, and life support services to the U.S. military through joint venture contracts. A staunch supporter of Army Ordnance, General Gibson currently resides in Odenton, Maryland.