BonnieBlueFlag -- Wind Talkers

By BonnieBlueFlag

I noticed that a Mr. Charles Chibitty passed away this past week, and
the local Oklahoma news headline mentioned that he had been the last
of the World War II Code Talkers.

Upon further reading, I realized that he was the last of the "Comanche"
Code Talkers.

Now I have known about the code talkers for as long as I can remember.
Even as a child, I tended to pick up odd bits of history concerning
American Indians, because I was proud of the small amount of Cherokee
history that I called my own.

What I had not known, was that the Navajo were not the only code
talkers, just the most numerous and the most famous. And that World War
II was not the first time that the American Indians, had provided such
an important service to the United States Armed Forces in winning a
war.

First of all, there were two types of Native American language codes:

1)A special coded vocabulary using the vocabulary of the Native American
languages.
2)A non-coded use of one of the everyday Native American
languages.
In World War I, the following Tribes participated as code talkers,
using
one of the above types of codes.
Cheyenne 2
Choctaw 1
Comanche 2
Cherokee 2
Osage 2
Sioux (Yankton) 2
The Tribes who contributed code talkers in World War II.
Comanche 1
Navajo 1
Chippewa 2
Choctaw 2
Creek 2
Hopi 2
Kiowa 2
Menominee 2
Muscogee-Seminole 2
Oneida 2
Pawnee 2
Sac and Fox 2
Sioux (Lakota and Dakota) 2

The Choctaws were recognized as the first to use their language as a
code in World War I. The US Army used at least 14 Choctaws as radio
operators during that war.

During the second World War, the Navajo tribe offered the largest
number of code talker candidates for the US Marines. It was also known that no
Japanese or German nationals had studied on their reservation, so there
was an even greater likelihood, that neither of those groups of people
had a knowledge of the Navajo language.

The first Navajo code talkers landed with the Marines on Guadalcanal in
August of 1942.

During World War II, 420 Navajo code talkers served with the Marines,
50 Choctaw and about 17 Comanche code talkers served with the Army in the
European invasion. Other tribes were represented by smaller numbers of
code talkers, but all used their own languages.

It has only been in the last few years, that the United States
government has begun to officially recognize the contribution of these
brave Americans, to the Allied Armies' success in winning the second
World War. For many years it was kept secret, in the event that they
might be called upon to serve once more. Modern technological advances
have made that unlikely, so at long last their story has been told.

Charles Chibitty/By Rudi Williams/American Forces Press Service
Mr. Chibitty was born near Medicine Park, Oklahoma on November 20,
1921.

He attended Haskell Indian School at Lawrence, Kansas, where he was
forbidden to speak his native language. He enlisted in the US Army in
January of 1942.

Years later he would say that they tried to make us quit talking Indian
in school, now they want us to talk Indian.
Corporal Chibitty earned the W.W. II Victory Medal, the European
Theater of Operations (5th Bronze Star) Victory Medal, the Europe African
Middle

East Campaign Medal, and the Good Conduct Medal.
In 1989, the French government honored the Comanche code talkers, by
presenting them with the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.

In 1992, former Secretary of Defense, now Vice-president Dick Cheney,
presented Mr. Chibitty a certificate of appreciation for his service to
the country.

In 2001, the US Congress passed legislation authorizing the
presentation of gold medals to Native Americans who served as code talkers during
foreign wars.

In a 1998 story for "The Oklahoman," Mr. Chibitty recalled being at
Normandy on D-Day, and said someone once asked him what he was afraid
of most and if he feared dying.

"No. That was something we had already accepted," he said.

"But we landed in deeper water than anticipated. A lot of boys drowned.
That's what I was afraid of."

"I wonder what the hell Hitler thought when he heard those strange
voices," he once told a gathering.

In November of 2002 Mr. Chibitty met with Pentagon officials in
Washington, and when asked about code talking, he gave them a few
examples in the Comanche language, and then translated the messages for
them.

"A turtle is coming down the hedgerow. Get that stovepipe and shoot
him."

"A turtle was a tank and a stovepipe was a bazooka," he explained. "We
couldn't say tank or bazooka in Comanche, so we had to substitute
something else. A turtle has a hard shell, so it was a tank."
Since there was no Comanche word for machine gun it became "sewing
machine," Chibitty noted, "because of the noise the sewing machine made
when my mother was sewing."

"Hitler," he said, was "posah-tai-vo," or "crazy white man."
After his visit in Washington that year, and before returning home to
Tulsa, Okla., Mr. Chibitty spent some time with researchers at the US
Army Center for Military History for oral history sessions. The Army
wanted to preserve the history of the Comanche code talkers and
Charles
Chibitty was the last one to tell the story from first-hand experience.

When we repeatedly talk about the men who have gone before us, the men
who have fought and died for this country's freedom, we are talking
about men like Charles Chibitty. What did he owe the US Army? The same
army that had driven his people from the freedom of the Great Plains to
life on a reservation?

And yet he enlisted in that same army for the good of all Americans. He
landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, somewhere near my own father, and fought
to defeat "Posah-tai-vo," for all of us.

Charles Chibitty, we will be forever grateful, and it is our fondest
wish that may you be welcomed home, by the great Comanche war chief,
Quanah Parker himself.

Written by: BonnieBlueFlag