The Secret Indian Code Talkers of World War I
Before the famed Navajo of WWII, Choctaw soldiers pioneered a secret code based on their language, helping to turn the tide for the Allies in World War I.
Most Americans are familiar with the legendary Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, whose unbreakable code played a critical role in U.S. military success in the Pacific. Yet decades earlier, during World War I, another group of Native American soldiers made history as the first battlefield “code talkers”—a fact rarely told in standard accounts of the war. In the late summer of 1918, American Expeditionary Forces in France were grappling with a dire communications problem. German intelligence had become adept at intercepting radio and telephone messages, quickly deciphering field codes, and mounting effective counterattacks. French and British attempts to create new codes often failed or were too slow to be useful in the fast-moving theater of the Western Front. A remarkable solution emerged from the ranks of the U.S. Army’s 142nd Infantry Regiment, part of the 36th Division, which included numerous members of the Choctaw Nation from Oklahoma. These soldiers had been denied the right to vote or serve on juries back home, yet here they found an opportunity to make their language a powerful weapon. On October 26, 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, a company commander remembered the presence of Choctaw speakers in his unit. Realizing that the complex, unwritten Choctaw language would be incomprehensible to German listeners, leadership quickly developed a plan. Eight Choctaw soldiers were tasked with transmitting critical military messages between command posts and units. Because Choctaw lacked words for modern artillery or machine guns, the men ingeniously substituted descriptive phrases, such as “big gun” for artillery and “little gun shoot fast” for machine gun. The effect was immediate and dramatic. German eavesdroppers, who had previously excelled at decoding enemy transmissions, found themselves utterly baffled. In mere days, American units could relay locations, orders, and strategies secure from interception, directly aiding key advances. One American officer recorded that after implementing Choctaw code talkers, “the enemy’s complete surprise and the crushing defeats at St. Etienne and Forest Ferme have been attributed in great measure to this.” The concept spread quickly, and Native soldiers of other tribes, including Comanche and Cherokee, were soon recruited for similar “code talking” assignments. Although the contribution of these early code talkers faded from public memory, their actions set a powerful precedent for later military use of Native American languages in secure communications. For Choctaw, Comanche, and other tribes, their service was a source of great pride and fostered a sense of recognition and inclusion long denied by their own government. It would not be until 2008 that Congress officially recognized the contributions of the World War I code talkers and awarded them Congressional Gold Medals. Given the secretive nature of code talker operations, even today many Americans are unaware that the origins of the legendary Native American code talking corps stretch back to World War I and the inventive, courageous service of Choctaw soldiers on the battlefields of France.###END###
