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COL. BERNARD
AABEL
APRIL 1955-JUNE 1959
Col. Robert
L. Black was succeeded by Col. Bernard
Aabel. Aabel was born in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, in 1907. He received a B.S. in
pharmacy from the University of Minnesota in
1932 and entered the pharmaceutical
business. He was commissioned in the Medical
Administrative Corps in 1940 and entered
active duty in 1941. He was a graduate of
the Army War College.
Aabel landed
on OMAHA Beach in 1944 as the S-2 of the
68th Medical Group and was wounded that
October. His postwar assignments included
Deputy Commander of the Medical Replacement
Center at Camp Pickett, Virginia, and duty
with the Surgeon General's Personnel
Division, Washington, D.C. There, as a
Pharmacy Corps major, he testified in
support of formation of the Medical Service
Corps. His performance was such that Senator
Millard E. Tydings of Maryland recommended
Aabel's appointment as chief of the new
corps. In 1948 Aabel became the Assistant
Military Attaché in Helsinki, Finland,
following training duty with the
Intelligence Division of the Army Staff. He
was promoted to colonel in 1950 on the tenth
anniversary of his entry on active duty and
received Finland's Order of the White Rose
for his attaché duty in 1951.
When selected
Chief of the Medical Service Corps, Colonel
Aabel was serving as Chief of the Surgeon
General's Officer Procurement Branch. He
continued to serve in that role, thereby
starting a precedent of "dual-hatting" the
Chief of the Medical Service Corps. After
his term as Chief, Aabel became the Surgeon
General's liaison officer to the Central
Intelligence Agency. He retired from the
Army in 1962.
At the time
of his death in 1968 Aabel was director of
the American Medical Association's
International Health Department at the AMA's
headquarters in Chicago. In 1972 the
Secretary of the Army named the
administration building of the new Academy
of Health Sciences (successor to the Medical
Field Service School) Aabel Hall.
Source: Norman D.
Moore, biography of Aabel, THU, OTSG, May
1968, DASG-MS; DA, HQ Fort Sam Houston,
Texas, GO 136, 15 November 1972, Stimson
Library, AHS; U.S. Congress, House,
Committee on Armed Services, Hearings on
H.R. 1982 "To Establish a Permanent Medical
Service Corps in the Medical Department of
the Regular Army," 80th Cong., 1st sess.,
beginning 20 February 1947, see 12 March
1947 (Aabel biography); "Froehlke to
Speak-Army Secretary," Express and News,
San Antonio, Texas, 9 December 1972. |
