David D. Barrett - Pre-war Life in China

Pre-war Life in China

Barrett arrived in Beijing in 1924 and assumed the post of Assistant Military Attaché for Language Study. The process by which Barrett learned the Beijing dialect consisted of daily practice with Mandarin teachers of approximately five hours, followed by an additional two hours of personal study. Barrett called his time with the teachers a joy and the dialect spoken in the former imperial capital, "the most beautiful Chinese in the world."

Part of Barrett's education involved the use of the Chinese Classics, such as the Confucian Analects, and I Ching. Later in life, he instantly impressed and earned a greater respect and appreciation from Chinese for his ability to quote passages from the Classics. Barrett augmented his education with trips into the countryside to practice conversation with the less urban Chinese. In 1927, he was transferred to the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment headquarters in Tientsin. 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 Tientsin 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 Tientsin as a regimental intelligence staff officer. From that position, he watched the Kuomintang suppression of the Chinese Communists, who, in Barrett's opinion, were irresponsibly and wrongly designated as bandits by the KMT.

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

Stationed in Tientsin and then Beijing, 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. 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 Japanese troops. 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 Beijing, Barrett moved with the Nationalist government as it fled the approach of the Japanese, first to Hankow, where Barrett often drove out to the front line to observe the fighting between the Chinese and Japanese forces. By 1938, Hankow fell and the Nationalists again retreated, this time to Chungking. It was in Chungking that Barrett remained until 1943.