The Secret Code Passes Muster: Early November to December 1942: Guadalcanal
- This chapter takes us right back to the beginning of the book. Remember, in the first chapter, Chester describes his landing on Guadalcanal in the heat of battle, as artillery shells and bullets fly all around.
- Here, Chester takes us back to that scene. He and Roy have made it to the beach on Guadalcanal alive (hooray!). They've dug a foxhole and now they're both crammed in there, wet and scared.
- Roy and Chester can't sleep that night. Who can sleep with "Midnight Charlies" (Japanese bombers) flying overhead and Banzai (Japanese suicide-attackers) lurking somewhere in the darkness?
- The next morning, Chester completes a traditional Navajo morning blessing with his corn pollen. He keeps a pouch of it in his uniform pocket. Chester needs all the protection and blessing he can get; now he's officially in the middle of the war.
- Lieutenant Hunt, Chester and Roy's superior, isn't happy about having to switch code tactics in the middle of battle.
- To test the new code, the standard communications men and the new Navajo code talkers are given the same message.
- It takes four hours for the message to be delivered using the "Shackle" code. It takes the Navajo Marines two and half minutes to deliver the message in Navajo code.
- The American Marines who overhear the Navajo code over the radio are alarmed, thinking that the Japanese have broken into U.S. radio frequencies. They jam the sounds.
- This is the second big mix-up that happens with the Navajo code (remember when the military along the U.S. west coast went into "condition black" because of the code?)
- So that this mix-up doesn't happen again, the code talkers tag their messages with the words "New Mexico" or "Arizona," followed by the time and date, spoken in Navajo.
- Lieutenant Hunt is convinced that the Navajo code works. Soon after, runners begin arriving with messages for the Navajo Marines to deliver.
- Runners are dudes who perform the dangerous work of scouting ahead of U.S. lines into enemy territory in order to report on locations of Japanese troops and armaments.
- A runner arrives with a first message for Chester: "Enemy machine-gun nest on your right flank. Destroy." Roy begins cranking the radio, and Chester delivers the message in Navajo code. Boom! Just like that, the Japanese machine-gun nest is destroyed by the Americans. Chester and Roy can't believe their eyes: their code is working!
- After sending the message, Chester and Roy have to crawl to a new position. They can't stay in the same place after delivering a message because the Japanese can track their radio positions and, well, drop a bomb on them. Not cool.
- Roy and Chester switch places: it's Chester's turn to crank the radio and Roy's turn to deliver the messages.
- Bullets are whizzing buy and there's shelling everywhere. That first day, they deliver messages through the heat of battle for twenty-four hours non-stop.
- Finally, after a really long, and really hard first day, they can get some sleep.
- Yeah, it's in a foxhole, but after twenty-four hours running around, delivering messages and trying not to get killed, a foxhole doesn't seem so bad.
- The next day they wake up early, hungry, and crawl to the mess hall. After breakfast, they get back to transmitting messages.
- The messages they send to the U.S. ships offshore include calls for ammunition, food, medical supplies, as well as the locations of enemy troops and U.S. artillerymen. There are four code talkers on the ship and six on land, transmitting to each other.
- A message arrives for Chester to deliver: it's the coordinates of forward U.S. troop locations on the island.
- The pilots flying U.S. bombers need these coordinates, so they don't accidentally bomb their own American buddies. That would be bad.
- That night, as Chester, Roy and the other Marines are in their foxholes, a Japanese suicide-attacker (a Banzai) jumps out of nowhere.
- One of the Marines shoots him dead as he runs toward them. Phew! That was close.
- Chester manages to get a few hours of sleep that night. When he wakes up, he finds Roy and a couple of other code talkers eating military rations.
- Chester's feet are covered in blisters from the soaking wet foxhole. He's miserable. He thinks of home, and the beautiful piñon and oak trees on Grandmother's land on the Checkerboard.
- A lot of the Japanese troops are sheltering in Mount Austen, a mountain on the island, which also give them an advantage because they can look out on and attack the Americans on shore from there.
- If the Marines are going to take the island, they need to take Mount Austen first.