mmunications. Messengers were sent out from one company to another. These messengers had been dubbed runners. One out of four runners were captured by German troops. The Germans had decoded all transmitted messages up to this point in the war.
The Germans were unable to break this 'code' however and within 24 hours, the tide of the battle had turned, and within 72 hours, the Germans were in full retreat.
Sadly, although the battalion commander told the men he was putting them in for medals, the men never received any recognition from the army for their contributions. The last Choctaw code talker died in 1982. Still unrecognized.
Twenty five years later, America was embroiled in another World War. Again, it was a war with few secrets. Allied Intelligence had broken the German and Japanese communications codes. But the Japanese had also broken every code the Americans thought up. Many of the top Japanese code breakers had been educated in the United States and as such were aware of even local references and slang that the American forces tried to use to disguise their intentions.
Perhaps the Choctaw Code Talkers might have had some success again, but there had only been eight of them (recognised officially) in that test of World War I and they had long since been forgotten...or had they?
Seventeen Comanches were assigned to the Comanche Signal Corps of the Army and, like the Chocktaws before them, passed messages among themselves that could not be understood by the Germans. Little did the Germans listening-in realize that the words posah-tai-vo meant crazy white man, and were used to identify none other than Adolph Hitler!
The Comanche Signal Corp included:
Charles Chibitty, Haddon Codynah, Robert
Holder, Forrest Kassanavoid, Wellington Mihecoby, Edward Nahquaddy, Perry Noyabad,
Clifford Otitovo, Simmons Parker, Melvin Permansu, Elhin Red Elk, Roderick Red
Elk, Larry Saupitty, Morris (Sunrise) Tabbyetchy, Tony Tabbytite, Ralph Wahnee,
and Willie Yackeschi.
Charles Chibitty, the last surviving Comanche Code Talker Died July 20, 2005 (more on him later)
The most ambitious effort to employ native languages as secret codes was championed by Philip Johnston. Johnston was a World War I veteran who had come by covered wagon to settle on Navajo land in northern Arizona with his missionary family. By age 9, he had gained such proficiency in Navajo language that he acted as interpreter between two Navajo leaders and President Theodore Roosevelt when they met in 1901. Johnston had heard of the Choctaw Code Talkers, and he was convinced that the Navajo language would also be nearly impossible for an enemy to understand. After all, he was one of perhaps 30 non-natives who understood the complex and subtle Navajo expressions. Now, all he needed to do was convince the skeptical military that he had the answer to their security problems.
Johnston did convince Lt. Col. James E. Jones, a Marine signal officer, to let him put on a demonstration at Camp Elliott, near San Diego, in February of 1942. Navajo volunteers translated typical military messages from English to Navajo, and sent the messages to another room where other Navajos translated them back to English within 20 seconds. Using coding machines to convey the same messages took 30 minutes. The Marines agreed to enlist Johnston and 30 Navajos to try their system in actual combat...but it had to be foolproof. Allied forces in the Pacific would be staking their lives on the security of the orders sent via the Code Talkers.
Carl Gorman was one of the Navajos sent to Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942. As a young boy attending school at the Rehoboth Mission in Chinle, Arizona, he had been locked in chains in the school basement for refusing to speak English instead of Navajo. With Japanese forces sweeping over Guadalcanal and listening to every Marine radio frequency, Gorman and his friends William Yazzie, Jack Nez and Oscar Ilthma called in artillery fire and provided status reports in what again sounded like gibberish to the enemy.
The Japanese cracked every code that the Army and Navy cam