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OBITUARY - Charles Chibitty: msg#00031science.cryptography.bletchley-park
THE TIMES July 28, 2005 OBITUARY - Charles Chibitty November 20, 1921 - July 20, 2005 Comanche code-talker whose messages in his native tongue baffled German attempts to read American signals on D-Day WHEN the US Army sought a code for its forces in the North West Europe theatre that the Germans would be unable to decipher, it turned to a group of Comanches of whom Charles Chibitty was the last survivor. Like the much larger numbers of Navajos, who performed a similar function for US forces in the Pacific theatre, Chibitty and his select group of colleagues provided a secure medium for transmitting messages between HQs and units which totally baffled the enemy. One of a number of Uto-Aztecan languages scattered across the western United States and northern Mexico, the Comanche tongue was ideal as a secret code. By the outbreak of war, after decades of proscription by the US authorities, the language was spoken by very few people (today only 800 speak it) - and it had no written alphabet. (One was not adopted until 1994.) >From the moment the Americans landed on Utah and Omaha beaches German specialists monitoring signal traffic were mystified by the sounds they heard coming over their receivers, and remained so during the rest of the campaign, as they vainly tried to crack the American "code". They were never to know, for example, that the sound which they heard as "posah tai vo" was the Comanche for â"crazy white man", and referred to their supreme warlord Adolf Hitler. Charles Chibitty was born in 1921 near Medicine Park, Oklahoma. From the late 1800s onwards there had been discrimination against native American languages and, like many Comanche children before him, he was educated in a boarding school, Haskell Indian School, in Lawrence, Kansas. There he was required to speak only English, and like his schoolmates he was punished if he did otherwise. This atmosphere changed when war came. The use of native American languages as codes in wartime was not new. In the First World War Choctaw had been used as a means of rendering messages unreadable by the enemy, and had played an important role in the Meuse-Argonne battle of September-October 1918. In January 1941, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour had led to America's direct involvement in the conflict, Chibitty was one of 20 Comanches from Oklahoma who enlisted and were selected for special communications duty in the European theatre. They were trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, where they compiled a vocabulary of military terms. Since the Choctaw language was not rich in the vocabulary of modern warfare, Chibitty and his comrades had to improvise. Thus, since Comanche had no word for "tank", the code-talkers, as they were known, substituted the word "turtle". For "Âmachinegun" they decided on "sewing machine", while"bomber" became "pregnant aeroplane". As Allied forces built up in the vast armed camp England had become by early 1944, Chibitty and his colleagues crossed the Atlantic and prepared to go ashore on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. For the assault, Chibitty was one of the two Comanches who were attached to each of the regiments of the 4th Infantry Division, which was commanded by General Joseph "Lightning Joe" Collins. This landed on Utah Beach on the right flank of the Allied landings, and Chibitty sent the first Commanche message on D-Day which, in English, read: â"Five miles to the right of the designated area and five miles inland the fighting is fierce, and we need help.".../snip/ ...Charles Chibitty, Comanche code talker, was born on November 20, 1921. He died on July 20, 2005, aged 83. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1710775,00.html \--=-// ( o^o ) ---------------------------------------oOOO------(_)---OOOo----- | Martin Postranecky Phone : [00-44]-(0)20-7679 3453 | | Senior Experimental Officer Phone : [00-44]-(0)20-7679 2000 | | UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON Fax : [00-44]-(0)20-7679 7145 | | DEPT.OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY E-Mail: mp-pp66qEZkvlw2EctHIo1CcQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | | Gower Street,London, WC1E 6BT http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/ | ---------------------------------------------ooOo-----oOo------- |
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