David D. Barrett

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David Dean Barrett
San Francisco, California
Allegiance United States
Service/branchUnited States Army seal United States Army
Years of serviceThirty-five
Rank Colonel
Commands heldU.S. Army Observation Group to Yan'an
AwardsLegion of Merit

David Dean Barrett (August 6, 1892 – February 3, 1977) was an American

Patrick Hurley
falsely accused Barrett of undermining his mission to unite the Communists and Nationalists.

Early life

David Dean Barrett was born in

First World War
, he reenlisted, earning a commission as a second lieutenant. However, he spent the war serving in the United States.

He chose to make the military a career and volunteered to take part in the

Bolsheviks in 1920. Instead, his troopship was sent to the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands, where he spent the next four years. Barrett learned of an army program to train officers in foreign languages and signed up in hopes of traveling to Japan and learning its language. Disappointed once again, he was instead ordered to Beijing, China.[1]

Pre-war life in China

Barrett arrived in Beijing in 1924 and assumed the post of Assistant Military Attaché for Language Study. He mastered the Beijing dialect through five hours of practice with Mandarin teachers each day, followed by two hours of personal study. Barrett recalled this time as a joy and said the dialect spoken in the former imperial capital was "the most beautiful Chinese in the world."[2]

Part of Barrett's education involved the study of the

Fort Benning, Georgia
.

The three years he spent at the school and in the United States was an anomaly in a career that was spent almost entirely in China. By 1931, he was permanently assigned at the

encirclement campaigns against the Chinese Communists, who, in Barrett's opinion, were irresponsibly and wrongly designated as bandits by the KMT.[4]

Barrett's tour of duty in Tianjin ended in 1934. Two years later, he was assigned to be an Assistant Military Attaché to the American Legation in Beiping (the then-name of Beijing). His executive officer in Beiping and acting Military Attaché, was Joseph Stilwell, then a full colonel.

Stationed in Tianjin and then Beiping, Barrett had a front-row seat to watch the growing Japanese encroachment on China. The most notable event that Barrett personally witnessed was the

Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, which began the Second Sino-Japanese War. On the day after the start of the conflict, July 8, Barrett was among the first foreign observers on the scene. Later the same day, Barrett returned with Stilwell, where both men were fired upon by the Imperial Japanese Army.[5] It was, Barrett noted, the first and last time he ever heard a shot pass him in anger.[6]

Due to his position in the American Legation in Beiping, Barrett moved with the

Hankou
, where Barrett often drove out to the front line to observe the fighting between the Chinese and Japanese forces. By 1938, Hankou fell and the Nationalists again retreated, this time to Chongqing. It was in Chongqing that Barrett remained until 1943.

Second World War career

Barrett remained in the capacity of Assistant

John Magruder. However, any sense of accomplishment for the post was stymied by the build-up of a major American military presence in China. It was because the position of attaché was attached to the embassy, and so Barrett was removed from much of the military planning and operations executed by the regular American military, whose presence was constantly growing in the capital. Another problem was the habit of Nationalist officials to bypass Barrett and communicate directly with the American military personnel.[1]

Barrett remained in the position through the summer of 1943. Under the belief that he would never gain promotion to general officer, he requested a transfer out of the embassy detail. His wishes were granted and he found himself assigned to assist in the American creation of a Chinese field army at Guilin in the Guangxi Province in southern China. Due to supply failures and political entanglements, the army never advanced beyond the establishment of a headquarters.[7] It was from that post that Barrett was plucked out and sent to command the observer group to Yan'an.

Command of the Dixie Mission

On March 24, Barrett received an order to proceed to Chongqing for temporary duty, unaware of the plans for the observer group to Yan'an. Not until he met John Service four days after his arrival in Chongqing, did he learn he was to assume command of the mission. At the time, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had not yet provided his consent to the mission and Barrett waited a month in Chongqing before being ordered back to Guilin. He remained there until the start of July, when the success of Vice-President Henry Wallace's mission to Chongqing signaled a green light for the mission.[2]

Col. Barrett, Maj. Ray Cromley, Maj. Melvin Casbert, Capt. John Colling, Capt. Charles Stelle, Capt. Paul Domke, 1st Lt. Henry Wittlesey, Staff Sgt Anton Remeneh, US Embassy 2nd Secretary John S. Service and political attaché Raymond Ludden arrived in Yan'an on July 22, 1944. While Service handled political discussions, Barrett was in charge of working out a cooperative military strategy.[8]

Barrett remained in command of the Dixie Mission until November 1944, when he was removed to help Ambassador

Albert C. Wedemeyer. While serving as a courier and representative for Wedemeyer's chief of staff, General Robert B. McClure, Barrett was sent on two missions to Yan'an to speak with Communist leadership. The last discussion involved the possibility of a joint Communist-American military mission involving several thousands of American troops. As this plan, developed by McClure, hurt Hurley's attempts to bring the Communists into a joint-government plan, Hurley accused Barrett of sabotaging his negotiations. Hurley stopped a promotion in motion to make Barrett a brigadier general
and had him removed to a small corner of the China theater for the rest of the war.

Post-war life

Barrett left Mainland China in 1950 after the Communist Party seized control in the Chinese Civil War. One year later, he was falsely implicated as the leader of a conspiracy to have Antonio Riva and Ruichi Yamaguchi assassinate Mao Zedong with a mortar strike on Tiananmen Square during National Day celebrations. Although Riva and Yamaguchi were executed and several other expatriates were imprisoned, in 1971 Premier Zhou Enlai explained that claiming his involvement had been a mistake, apologized to Barrett, and invited him to visit the country again.[9]

From 1950 to 1953, he served as the first

Air attaché).[10]
This was his last post before retiring from the U.S. Army.

As a civilian, Barrett served as a professor at the

University of Colorado
. He was instrumental in establishing a modern Chinese language course there and lectured in the modern history of China and occasionally in Shakespearean studies.

See also

In 2013, the story of the Dixie Mission served as the historical basis for a new World War II novel called Two Sons of China, by Andrew Lam. Colonel Barrett is portrayed as a prominent historical figure in the book. It was released by Bondfire Books in December 2013.[11]

References

  1. ^ Hart (1985), pp. 1–2
  2. ^ Hart (1985), pp. 6–7
  3. ^ Hart (1985), pp. 8–9
  4. ^ Hart (1985), pp. 13–14
  5. ^ Dorn (1974), p. 4
  6. ^ Hart (1985), pp. 30–31
  7. ^ Hart (1985), pp. 33–34
  8. ^ Vladimirov (1975), pp. 235, 254. This source is edited in a way that suggests strong political bias introduced decades after the original writing.
  9. ISBN 978-1-62040-347-1
    .
  10. ^ 臺灣省通志 卷3 政事志 外事篇 [General Gazetteer of Taiwan Province, Volume III: Political History: On Foreign Affairs], Taipei: Historical Records Committee of Taiwan Province, 1971-06-30, p. 280
  11. ^ Lam (2014)

Bibliography

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