{"id":1069,"date":"2014-04-15T19:44:39","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T02:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2014-12-29T09:38:30","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T16:38:30","slug":"comanche-code-talker-shares-pride-in-service-signal-soldier-history-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/?p=1069","title":{"rendered":"COMANCHE CODE TALKER SHARES PRIDE IN SERVICE SIGNAL-SOLDIER HISTORY REVISITED"},"content":{"rendered":"<pre>Story and Photos by Marc Frucht\r\n  Published in Mountaineer Weekly July 20, 1990\r\n  Comanche Code Talker Forrest Kassanavoid told\r\nsoldiers of 124th Sig BN to be proud of their lineage.\r\n  \"You have a special relationship with an Indian Tribe\r\nin Oklahoma,\" he told them.\r\n  Kassanavoid shared his World War II, 4th infantry div\r\nexperiences with the signal soldiers during a battalion\r\nsponsored luncheon at Giuseppe's Depot Restaurant,\r\nTuesday afternoon.\r\n  The military recruited Comanche, Navajo and Choctaw\r\nIndians because their native language was harder to crack\r\nthan codes they came up with every day. The Germans and\r\nItalians were never able to interpret any of the trans-\r\nmissions they'd intercepted which contained the Indian\r\nlanguages.\r\n  124th SIG BN boasts campaign history from WWII through\r\nVietnam including the Normandy invasion. Back then it was\r\ncalled the 4th SIG CO, according to Kassanavoid. Organized\r\nJune 1, 1940 in the Harmony Church area of Fort Benning,\r\nGA.; the 4th SIG worked under many commanding officers and\r\nKassanavoid remembers almost every single one.\r\n  \"Let's see,\" said the code talker, \"first there was Capt.\r\nTerrance Tulley. He was a West Point grad, 1920. Then we got\r\nCapt. Arthur McCrarey, then 1st Lt. Seoul Christman. He became\r\nthe division signal officer until he was seriously wounded in\r\nan air attack in Normandy. Then came Capt. Phillip Bragen, and\r\nhmmmm, a Capt. Dunaway...\" He then went on to share all of his\r\n4th Infantry Division war stories with the signal soldiers.\r\n  As a recruit, the code talker went from Fort Benning, GA.,\r\nto Camp Gordon, now Fort Gordon and home of Army Signal School.\r\n[Coincidently where Colonel Kaddaffy, Agosto Pinochet and Manuel\r\nNoriega all took classes at one time or another.] From there he\r\nwent to Fort Dix, NJ; Camp Gordon Johnson for amphibious\r\ntraining; Camp Jackson, SC and then Camp Joyce Kilmer, NJ\r\nfor his portcall.\r\n  Destination?\r\n  Liverpool, England, to regroup and train at Tibberton in\r\nDevonshire, and then to invade Utah Beach.\r\n  4th SIG was made up of five platoons, according to\r\nKassanavoid. HQ platoon contained the company clerks, mess\r\ncooks, drivers, supply and maintainance soldiers. The Message\r\nCenter section was where the distribution came and went.\r\nThere was a radio section similar to what signal battalions\r\nhave today; and a \"T-n-T\" section. They handled all aspects\r\nof telephone and telegraph, to include the division\r\nswitchboard. The wire people, Kassanavoid included, were\r\ncalled the construction section.\r\n  Street fighting was not fun from the construction section\r\npoint of view, according to Kassanavoid.\r\n  \"We had to lay all the wire along the streets. We'd tag \r\nthe wires just like you still do today. But then the civilians\r\naround town would take the tags as souvenirs.\"\r\n  He said without tags, troubleshooting became \"one hell of a\r\ntime.\"\r\n  In wartime, light discipline didn't mean red lenses or quick\r\nflicks of light that hopefully no one will notice. All wire \r\nconstruction was done in the dark.\r\n  \"You feel your way out there,\" he said. Out into the darkness\r\nhe went expecting a saboteur maybe, but hoping it was nothing\r\nmore than a short or a grounded wire. Most of the time he'd do\r\na quick fix, ring back to a switchboard and then dig in.\r\n  Kassanavoid said that on D-Day, June 6, 4th SIG was right in\r\nthe middle of things. While the 7th Corps was bombarding Omaha\r\nBeach, three battalions from the 4th Infantry Division invaded\r\nat Utah. Paratroopers made a perfect landing at Utah Beach, but\r\nthe Navy dropped 4th SIG - along with their division - about a\r\nhalf mile off because of choppy waters and changing tides.\r\n  \"Fortunate,\" said Kassanavoid. \"It was pretty dry where we\r\nlanded. We didn't have to worry as much about water.\"\r\n  They battled in what he termed 'hedgerow fighting.' He \r\nsaid farms were fenced off by nothing more than a series of \r\nhills pushed together and they had hedges on top. The signal \r\nsoldiers were almost grounded to a halt by the hedges; until \r\nthey called in for support. B-17s bombed every grid coordinate \r\nthey hollered over their radios and they managed to break out.\r\n  When they worked their way to Paris, he said all France had\r\nwas armored units, so 4th ID was asked to provide infantry\r\nsupport. That made 4th SIG front line troops, as well as \r\ninvasion forces.\r\n  When the war ended, Kassanavoid was billeted in Amburg in\r\npreparation for coming home. From there he went to Camp\r\nBruckner, N.C., where he was given 30 days furlough.\r\n  Kassanavoid discussed how 4th ID has changed over the \r\nyears as well as how it has stayed the same. Recruits didn't\r\ncome in right away as privates, according to the code talker.\r\nHis first four months he was called a \"yardbird;\" he was paid\r\n$21 a month. After becoming a private, a soldier could take\r\nin $30 a month. A \"shackman\" was someone married with\r\ndependents. He said 4th ID had more shackmen than any other\r\ndivision in the Army. He remarked at how many women there are\r\nin today's signal corps. Back then they didn't see women \r\nworking with radios or constructing wire.\r\n  Back in Kassanavoid's time the signal soldier had generators\r\nto power his equipment. Some were similar to the ones still in\r\nuse, but he said most of the time there was someone pushing a\r\nhand-crank to generate a couple volts.\r\n  He recognized the 5-gallon fuel cans being used in the \r\nsignal battalion's motor pool and commented that we stole\r\nthat idea from the Germans after World War I. A couple cans\r\ngot into our hands somehow and we've been making them for use\r\non jeeps ever since.\r\n  Kassanavoid said it was easy for a Comanche Indian to\r\nadapt to military life because all of their early education\r\nwas at government boarding schools.\r\n  \"Basically we changed barracks rooms and uniforms,\" Said\r\nKassanavoid, \"that's all.\"\r\n  Army-run schools on the Indian reservations meant speaking\r\nComanche at home, and mostly English at school. His grasp of\r\nboth languages made him an easy recruit for the Code Talker\r\nmission. Comanche language was used to relay some of the Army's\r\nmost important messages in WWII. The code talkers worked with\r\nregiments in the field where they coded messages back to 4th ID\r\nheadquarters so another 4 SIG could receive and decode the\r\nmessage.\r\n  Kassanavoid lives in Indiahoma, OK., with his wife Marian\r\nand three children - Larry who served in the Army infantry in\r\nVietnam; Marlon who served in a signal outfit in Europe; and\r\na daughter, Amaryllis.\r\n  He now works for the school department in Indahoma as home-\r\nschool co ordinator under the Johnson - O'Malley Program passed\r\nby Congress in 1934. His work is mostly youth-oriented, from\r\nfinancial assistance for young Indians, morale and attendance\r\nprograms, as well as sports programs\r\n  On Nov. 3, 1989, the French government awarded him the\r\nChevalier de l'Order National du Merite\" medal on the steps\r\nof Oklahoma's State Capitol. Two other surviving Comanche Code\r\nTalkers received the medal. Charles Chibitty is from Tulsa,\r\nand Dick Red Elk is from Lawton.\r\n  \"You soldiers can say with pride,\" Kassanavoid said, \"that\r\nyou've been decorated by the French. Being singled out like\r\nthat is a great honor.\"\r\n  He said the Comanche heritage is in a 124th SIG soldier's\r\nlineage and in his roots.\r\n  \"Be proud,\" he said, \"Be thankful.\"\r\n\r\n      PFC Frucht was a MOUNTAINEER stringer for \r\n    124SIG at the time of this publishing. While \r\n    Kassanavoid was on Utah Beach, Frucht has a \r\n    great uncle who lived through Omaha beach as \r\n    a signal soldier, and an uncle who also saw \r\n    combat as a \"radio man\" in the marines. Frucht \r\n    learned of this long after signing up for the \r\n    army signal corps himself. Go figure.  \r\n\r\n[ref]=[<a href=\"http:\/\/csmng.com\/mountaineer\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/csmng.com\/mountaineer<\/a>]<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Story and Photos by Marc Frucht Published in Mountaineer Weekly July 20, 1990 Comanche Code Talker Forrest Kassanavoid told soldiers of 124th Sig BN to be proud of their lineage. &#8220;You have a special relationship with an Indian Tribe in Oklahoma,&#8221; he told them. Kassanavoid shared his World War II, 4th infantry div experiences with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic","category-mundane-or-sublime","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1070,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muffinbottoms.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}