When researching a topic you don’t always find what you are looking for, but sometimes you find something even better. Recently I was looking through spring of 1919 issues of Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper. I was searching for information on the Army Air Service’s Victory Loan Flying Circus which was a military aerial acrobatic group traveling the U.S. in the spring of 1919 putting on air shows to promote the sell of U.S. bonds to pay World War I debt.
One of the organizers was Capt. Jack Heard who had commanded Payne Field near West Point during the World War I.
I did not find any additional information on the Flying Circus but I found an article headlined “Yank Indian Was Heap Big Help In Winning The War.” Though some of the article’s references to Indians were inappropriate stereotypes, the intent of the article was clearly to recognize the heroic and important contributions of Indians, especially the Choctaws, serving in World War I. Beneath that headline was a paragraph headed “Choctaw Code Fooled Boche” (Boche is a disparaging term used for German soldiers during WW I). That turned out to be more interesting then what I started out looking for.
I recalled the recent “Code Talkers” movie about the Navajo Code Talkers who were heroes during World War II but had no idea that the Choctaws during World War I were the first “code talkers.” I also found some once famous, but now almost forgotten, exploits of Choctaws and other Native Americans during the “Great War.”
The Stars and Stripes article described what it called the “Greatest Mystery of War.” It told of the fighting around St. Etienne during October 1918. There the thickets, swamps and woods were filled with the telegraph and telephone lines of the American units there. American military communications during World War I were usually telephone wires that were laid in the woods between units. The Germans realized this and sent small patrols into the American lines at night to tap into what was an American communications switchboard.
At first it was a great success for German Army intelligence units. Then as the newspaper reported: “But the Americans, after some little delay, continued to use their telephone lines, and the discomfited Boche on the other end of a tapped wire listened in vain, scratched his thick, square poll in amazement, and swore … either the ‘verdammter’ Americans were drunker than fiddlers or else the code they were using was a gift from Herr Gott Himself.”
And that strange code was described by the Stars and Stripes:
“The code was nothing more than Choctaw — plain, simple, old-fashioned, ordinary, catch-as-catch-can, everyday Choctaw.”
The paper went on to tell the story of how the Choctaw Code fooled the Germans:
“There was a Choctaw Indian at the P.C. who listened to the order given him by an American officer, and then repeated it, in Choctaw, to a fellow-tribesman at the other end of the wire, at the front; and this Indian translated it for the American officer who stood beside him. Shades of Prince Bismarck! Everything else had the Kaiser taken into consideration when he sprinted into the late unpleasantness, but he had failed to teach his soldiers or officers Choctaw.”
In several newspapers, I have found the following story whose dateline was New York, June 3, 1919, and titled: “Indian heroes come home.”
“Considerable attention was attracted here by a detail of 50 Indian soldiers who arrived on the Transport Pueblo under the command of Captain Horner, of Mena, Ark. These Indians have to their credit a unique achievement in frustrating German wire tappers. Under the command of Chief George Baconrind, an Indian from the Osage reservation, they transmitted orders in Choctaw, a language not included in German war studies.”
On one occasion after the Germans had been deceived by the Choctaw Code, a German general was captured. After his capture, the general asked what other nationality was assisting the Americans. He was told it was “only Americans.” While the Choctaws were noted for the Choctaw Code, there were more than 9,000 Native Americans from 60 different tribes serving with American forces in Europe. They were considered to be among the American troops most feared by the Germans as they were known for their bravery, marksmanship and skill at night patrols (often wearing moccasins rather than boots). The contribution of two of the Choctaws exemplifies the service of all.
Otis W. Leader (or Leador in some newspapers), a Choctaw from Oklahoma, was a code talker. In addition his exploits in combat became almost legendary. During fighting in July 1918, he captured two German machine gun positions and took 18 German soldiers prisoners. Later he was part of a crew manning an American machine gun and in the course of the fighting all of the other members of the gun’s crew were killed. However, Leader continued to hold the gun’s position for three days. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre (twice), a Purple Heart and battle stars for nine battles. General Pershing once referred to Leader as one of the “war’s greatest fighting machines.”
Leader was selected by a French artist as the “ideal of a typical American soldier” for a portrait which was painted to hang in the “Federal Building” in Paris.
Joseph Oklahombi, a Choctaw serving in the 141st Infantry of the 36th Army Division (a Texas division), rushed open ground to seize a German machine gun position, capture the machine gun and used it to fire on other German positions. His actions helped lead to the surrender of 171 German soldiers. In another engagement, Oklahombi was said to have used his marksman skills, learned hunting in Oklahoma, to kill 79 German soldiers. He was cited for bravery and awarded the Silver Star by General Pershing and the French Croix de Guerre by Marshall Pertain.
The importance of the U.S. Army’s Native American soldiers is best shown by the German response. An American captain captured by the Germans in 1918 was surprised that the information the Germans most tried to get from him was the number and locations of American Indian troops. The Germans even deployed an “extra force of snipers” to “cope” with Indians in American units. Though little recognized now, Native Americans serving in Europe, and especially Choctaws, played a significant role in the allied victory over Germany. A good site for additional information is http://www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org/choctaw/codetalkers.htm
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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