Whittlesey, Henry Clark (0358386): Difference between revisions

'''Henry Clark Whittlesey''' (10 August 1906–21 January 1945) was a China-born Ritchie Boy ([[Class 3]]) on the Dixie Mission; he was killed near Japanese lines in China and received the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.

Henry Clark Whittlesey was born on 10 August 1906 in Chongqing, China, one of six children of missionaries Roger and Annie Withey Whittlesey. He attended the Chefoo Schools in China through 1918 and later Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania (1924–1928). After returning to the United States he worked as a journalist in Philadelphia.

During World War II he trained at Camp Ritchie in Class 3 (photo interpretation) and at the Yale University Chinese School (1943). Fluent in Chinese, he joined the Dixie Mission (United States Army Observation Group) to Yan’an in 1944—the first U.S. liaison and intelligence mission with the Chinese Communists—arriving with the first party on 22 July 1944 under Colonel David D. Barrett. Whittlesey represented the Air Ground Aid Service (AGAS), helping downed American airmen avoid capture or escape Japanese imprisonment.

 

On 21 January 1945, while entering a village near Japanese lines that Communist guides had reported clear, Whittlesey and a photographer were killed by Japanese snipers. He is remembered as the only member of the Dixie Mission to die in the line of duty. (Some secondary accounts date the death 2 February 1945.) He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously. Short wartime sketches he wrote were later collected by his daughter Ruth Schroeder as ''Sidelights of the War''.

* Born Born and raised in China, Henry Whittlesey moved back to the United States before going to college. After marrying Jane Bernard, who gave birth to his first child Julia (Feeley) in 1942, he was summoned to help the American government explore means of cooperating more closely with the Communists in China as Roosevelt became increasingly dissatisfied.

* Distinguished Service Cross.