The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol by Ninian Stewart, Frank Cass, London, 2002, 217 pp., illustrations, maps, notes, annexes, appendices, sources, index, $25.00 softcover. There was some joy in the fact that we served this country of ours.” This superb account demonstrates that the Comanche code talkers continue to deserve recognition and respect for their wartime service and contributions to the American victory in Europe. The bibliography is comprehensive and sources are documented adequately.Īfter World War II, Kassanavoid observed, “We brought home a lot of Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars, but no one was killed…. Two dozen monochrome illustrations, numerous tables, and eight appendices supplement the well-written text. The author’s sources and methodology are enumerated in detail and placed superbly within their historiographical and ethnographical context. It is a fascinating saga, and the author adds information on the code talkers’ postwar experiences and conducts an extensive comparison between the Comanche and the Navajo code talkers. The inclusion of the participants’ explanations and perceptions of their service has added “many of the more day-to-day and even humorous, dangerous, and compelling experiences that were a part of the larger story” to the historical record. The author conducted extensive interviews with Forrest Kassanavoid, Roderick Red Elk, and Charles Chibitty, the living Comanche code talkers combat veterans. The core of the volume is a chronicle and assessment of the Comanche code talker experience during World War II, including recruitment, basic and communications training, military assignments, and cultural activities and attitudes. After a clear and perceptive introduction, the first chapter provides an overview of the origins of codes, military code development, the motivations of Native Americans to serve in the military, and the Choctaw code talker experiences in World War I. The author uses a broad interdisciplinary approach in tracing the development of Native American code talking. Meadows, an assistant professor of anthropology at Indiana State University, has corrected this historical oversight, and done much more, in his captivating and seminal The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II (University of Texas Press, Austin, 2003, 280 pp., illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index, $24.95 softcover). The achievements of the Comanche code talkers and their contributions on the battlefield and to eventual victory in Europe have frequently been overshadowed by others, notably the Navajo code talkers, the subject of the arguably stereotypical and clichéd 2002 MGM motion picture Windtalkers. This small and generally overlooked group of Comanche code talkers sent and received messages that the Germans and the Italians, as well as Comanches not trained as code talkers, could not understand. While under enemy fire, the Comanches began laying communications wire and transmitting messages in coded Comanche, a hybrid language never before heard in Europe. Army (Ret.)Īmong the stalwart 4th Infantry Division soldiers who assaulted Utah Beach at Normandy on D-day were 13 specially recruited and trained Comanche Indians of the 4th Signal Company.
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