David Dean Barrett (August 6, 1892 – February 3, 1977) was an American soldier, a diplomat, and an old Army China hand. Barrett served more than 35 years in the U.S. Army, almost entirely in China. Barrett was part of the American military experience in China, and played a critical role in the first official contact between the Chinese Communist Party and the United States government. He commanded the 1944 U.S. Army Observation Group, also known as the Dixie Mission, to Yan'an, China. However, his involvement in the Dixie Mission cost him promotion to general, when Presidential Envoy Patrick Hurley falsely accused Barrett of undermining his mission to unite the Communists and Nationalists.
Early life
David Dean Barrett was born in Central City, Colorado. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1909 and served for three years. He then entered the University of Colorado, graduated when he was 23. He taught high school English for the next two years, but when the United States entered the 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 American expedition to Siberia to fight 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.
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."
Part of Barrett's education involved the study of the Chinese Classics, such as the Confucian Analects, and I Ching. Later in life, he impressed the Chinese by his ability to quote passages from the Classics. Barrett also made trips to the countryside to practice conversation with rural Chinese. In 1927, he was transferred to the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment headquarters in Tianjin. The executive officer of the regiment at the time was Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall, the future Secretary of State. Battalion commander of one of the two battalions stationed in Tianjin was then Major Joseph Stilwell. Barrett encountered the two again a year later at the Infantry School at 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 Fifteenth Infantry in Tianjin as a regimental intelligence staff officer. From that position, he watched the Kuomintang's encirclement campaigns against the Chinese Communists, who, in Barrett's opinion, were irresponsibly and wrongly designated as bandits by the KMT.
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. It was, Barrett noted, the first and last time he ever heard a shot pass him in anger.
Due to his position in the American Legation in Beiping, Barrett moved with the Nationalist government as it fled the approach of the Japanese, first to 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.