The Other Indian Code Talkers

Stanley Noyes writes from, Santzi Fe. He enjoyed the column of about a few days ago on the Navajo Code Talkers, who fought in the Pacific in World War II - and would I be interested in finishing it? From where he sat, the job wasn't quite done. 

In the late 1990s while working on a book (“Comanches in the New West, 1835-1908: Historic Photographs"), he
attended the Comanche Nation Fair. At the Fort Sill, Okla., powwow area, the flag flew at half-staff. Noyes made inquiries. Roderick Red Elk, the next-to-last Comanche Code Talker, had just died. Noyes wrote in the book: “Much of the afternoon is given over to honoring the Comanche code talkers from the U.S. Army 4th Signal Corps, who served in Europe during World War II. 

The Navajo Code Talkers, who served in the Pacific, are of course well-known to journalists and have received deserved recognition. But the Comanche code talkers remain virtually unknown to the American public. Seventeen went into the Army in World War II. Fourteen went overseas. They landed at Utah Beach on June 6,1944 - D-Day. They fought all the way to Germany. They were Army combat infantrymen, grunts doing unique and valuable work.

There's a turtle coming down the road. Get the stovepipe gun and shoot him.  Tanks became turtles in Comanche code; bazookas became stovepipe guns; machine guns became sewing machines; bombers became pregnant airplanes; Hitler became posah-tai-vo (crazy white man). Some were wounded in combat, none died. One survives: Charles Chibitty, 81.
“I'm the last of the 17,” he said from his Tulsa home. 

In 1999, the Defense Department honored Chibitty with the Knowlton Award, created by the Military Intelligence Corps Association to recognize significant contributions to military intelligence efforts. Ten years earlier, the French government
recognized all of the Comanche Code Talkers with that nation's second-highest honor - Knight of the National Order of Merit.

Thursday marked 58 years since Chibitty waded ashore at Utah Beach. “What I was trying to remember was how deep that damn water was going to be,” he said. “So many guys drowned because they couldn't get out of the surf fast enough.”

They sent messages that the Germans never would decode. “A few years ago, when we got together with the Navajos, we found out they did what we did and we did what they did,” Chibitty said. They did it in a language their own government had spent many years trying to discourage. “When I went to Fort Sill Indian School way back, when I was just a little-bitty guy, we were forbidden to use our Indian language,” he said. "When we got to talking Indian, we were punished for it. They’d pop you once with a big old flat board or they’d give you a gunny sack and you’d go around picking up trash.”

He said the Comanches were received well in the Army. “We had a good boxing team. Most of us were boxing in Indian schools, you know?” he said. “We fought in the Army all the time. Only thing we didn't have was a light heavyweight. But there was this MP who worked out with us. He fought light-heavy for us. He was Jewish. We called him Chief Buffalo.”

He made it through the war unscathed, his worst moment coming at a place called St. Lo. His unit was dug in and taking heavy shelling from the Germans. “I cried that morning,” he said. “I was afraid because we had to move up again. I had the hell scared out me. I sat in that hole ‘and talked to the Creator.”

Fifty-eight years ago, he stepped onto a Normandy beach with a band of Comanche brothers. “I'm the last one living in the bunch now,” he said.