Roderick Red Elk volunteered to string telephone wire high on a lone dead tree so it wouldn't get severed by tracked vehicles. Although they had been in England for six months training for D-Day, some of the Code Talkers felt June 6 was just another exercise they'd been told was "the real thing." They also had to retrieve the wire as the troops advanced, and were trained with blindfolds to do splices in the dark. The majority of their work was to lay and repair telephone wire, which was easily tapped by the Germans. The Code Talkers were distributed in pairs throughout the 4th Infantry Division (Motorized). "We made a good landing," he spoke over the radio. He sent the first Comanche language message when they landed 2,000 yards from their target. (One of the 14 men was transferred to I-Corps because of his skill in cryptography, and three were discharged after training, leaving 13 to see combat.)Ĭode Talker Larry Saupitty was also the personal orderly, driver and radio operator to the division commanding general, Brig. Chosen primarily because the Comanche language is an unrecorded one and valuable for secret communication, the Comanches proved to be among the ablest men in the Company."Īlthough the Comanches trained as a group since their enlistment in December 1940 and January 1941, they were not combat-active until Jon the beaches of Normandy most of them at Utah Beach. The 4th Division (Motorized) publication even wrote, in 1942, "A dozen Comanche Indians from Oklahoma reported as a unit last December and January. For instance, bombers were "pregnant birds" and bombs were "baby birds." Tanks were "turtles," and Adolph Hitler was "crazy white man." Even other Comanches did not understand what these 250 words meant.Īpparently the program wasn't as secret as it should have been, as there were several newspaper articles written about the project. In addition to the language itself being a form of code to German eavesdroppers, the Comanches developed their own lingo of 250 code words to describe military and geographical terms for which there was no native word. As a matter of fact, the Code Talkers surprised their drill sergeant by how much they already knew, and their basic training was cut short because of it. Tribal warrior traditions were often a young Indian man's way of proving himself, and since government-run boarding schools operated with the strict discipline and order of military schools, the transition into Army life wasn't that strange for the Comanches. Native Americans historically volunteered for military service at nearly twice that of the American population, according to the author. However, since Comanche wasn't recorded in ethnographic books, it was the ideal "secret" language. Prior to World War II Japanese and German "scholars" visited America to research Native American languages, including some who supposedly visited a German missionary church near Indiahoma in 1939. Oklahoma's Choctaw was the first tribe used as code talkers during World War I, and a few news articles after the war were even written about the program. The 17 men who formed the Comanche Code Talkers weren't the first to be tasked with relaying messages in their native language during wartime. Their exploits were written in detail, and with voluminous research, by William Meadows in his 2003 book, "The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II." The information in this article is taken from that book, and from the exhibit and website at the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton. While the Navajo Code Talkers in the Pacific Theater were more well-known once the project became declassified in 1968 (see the "Wind Talkers" movie) the Comanche Soldiers used their skills from the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, through Victory in Europe Day. Lawton's own Comanches were among the several tribes that contributed to the war effort by using their language as a code, one the Germans never broke. Native American children in the early to mid-20th century were taken from their homes and taught in boarding schools which tried to erase all vestiges of their culture and language, and then a few years later it was their language that helped America win World War II. One of the sergeants saw this and asked them to do a formal performance.įORT SILL, Okla., Nov. When taking a break during a field exercise, one of the Comanches sang an Indian song over the radio, and several others spontaneously began dancing in their traditional style. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL 2 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Standing, left to right, with hometowns: Morris Sunrise Tabbyetchy (Cache-Indiahoma), Perry Noyabad (Cyril), Ralph Wahnee (Cyril-Fletcher), Haddon Codynah (Walters), Robert Holder (. Army 4th Signal Corps Comanche Code Talkers, Fort Benning, Ga.
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