Code talkers were Native Americans who used their languages to help the United States military communicate in secret. This black-and-white photograph shows two Navajo code talkers operating a radio during World War II (1939-1945). The Navajo language was unknown to the Germans and Japanese and proved impossible for them to decipher.
Credit: NARA

On November 11, the anniversary of the end of World War I (1914-1918), the United States observes Veterans Day honoring men and women who have served in the United States armed services. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as Armistice Day to remember the tragedies of war and appreciate peace achieved by the armistice (truce). In 1938, Armistice Day was made a federal holiday. Congress renamed the day Veterans Day to honor all United States Veterans in 1954. Around the world, the anniversary of the end of World War I is a day to remember those who have died in war. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand observe Remembrance Day on November 11. The United Kingdom observes Remembrance Day on the Sunday closest to November 11.

November is also Native American Heritage Month, a time to observe the cultures, histories, and traditions of Native Americans. Many Native Americans have served in the United States armed forces, contributing to the United States’ success in World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). Most notably, Native Americans called the Code Talkers developed and used codes that enabled the United States and its allies to communicate globally without enemy interference.

The Code Talkers were small groups of Native Americans who served in the United States armed forces in World War I and World War II. Code Talkers developed and used codes in Native American languages to send secret messages, helping the United States and its allies win both wars.

The engineer Philip Johnston suggested the United States Marine Corps use Navajo language as a code during World War II. He grew up on a Navajo reservation and knew that the Navajo language is unwritten, difficult to decipher (decode), and unknown to most people who are not Navajo. In 1942, the United States Marine Corps recruited 29 Navajo men to develop the code. The code talkers used familiar wards to represent U.S. military terms. For example, bombs were called eggs in Navajo. They also created a new phonetic alphabet with Navajo words.

Similarly, in World War I, 19 Choctaw men had served in the U.S. Army, sending and receiving messages based on the Choctaw language. During World War II, 17 Comanche men used their language for code in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

November 12, 2018

Yesterday, November 11, marked the 100th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended World War I (1914-1918). Large, somber ceremonies took place on the anniversary in Berlin, London, Paris, and other cities, as well as at important battlefield sites and at Compiègne, the town in northern France where the armistice was signed in 1918.

In northeastern France, soldiers of the United States Army’s 7th Infantry Division cheer the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918. Credit: U.S. Army

At 11 a.m. on November 11 (“the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”), Germany agreed to armistice terms with France and the United Kingdom, ending the last of the fighting during World War I. The war involved many more countries, however, and it caused greater destruction than any other war up to its time. The war took the lives of some 15 million people.

British troops leave their trenches during the 1916 Battle of the Somme during World War I. Credit: © Paul Popper, Popperfoto/Getty Images

Long-running tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia led to war in the summer of 1914. France, Russia, and the United Kingdom joined the war on Serbia’s side—a group that came to be known as the Allies. Germany backed Austria-Hungary to form the Central Powers. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire later joined the Central Powers, and Italy, the United States, and other nations later joined the Allies. As part of the British Empire, soldiers from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa fought in the war, as did soldiers from Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, and other French colonies at the time. Belgium, Greece, Romania, and other nations were forced to fight as the war crossed their borders.

Soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) march through Sydney, Australia, in 1919, shortly after the end of World War I. Credit: Australian War Memorial

Fighting in World War I took place on the Western Front in Belgium and northern France; the Eastern Front in eastern Europe; the Italian Front along the border of Austria-Hungary and Italy; the Salonika Front in the Balkan Peninsula; and the Middle Eastern Front in southwestern Asia. Fighting also occurred in parts of Africa and around the world at sea.

Russia withdrew from the war in 1917, but the United States entered that year, providing the help the Allies needed to win the war. After a series of cataclysmic battles in the spring of 1918, the war turned quickly against the Central Powers. By the time Germany agreed to stop fighting on November 11, Bulgaria (September 29), the Ottoman Empire (October 30), and Austria-Hungary (November 3) had already left the war. The warring nations then signed a series of formal peace treaties. The Treaty of Versailles, signed between Germany and France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, embittered many Germans and was a rallying cry on the road to World War II (1939-1945). 

After World War I, November 11 was remembered annually as Armistice Day, a holiday now known as Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom and nations of the former British Empire.

August 18, 2016

Australian veterans of the Vietnam War (1957-1975) were frustrated this week when the Vietnamese government canceled a memorial event planned for August 18. The day marks Australia’s annual Vietnam Veterans Day, but this year’s holiday carries extra significance. August 18, 2016, marks the 50^th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, Australia’s first major conflict in the Vietnam War. In that battle, a small group of soldiers from Australia and New Zealand defeated a much larger enemy force. The war is a sensitive subject for the Vietnamese government, who canceled the event the day before it was due to take place. More than 1,000 Australians had already traveled to Vietnam for the ceremony.

Australian troops wait to board U.S. Army helicopters bound for the Australian Task Force Base at Nui Dat, near Long Tan, Vietnam. Credit: Mike Coleridge, Australian War Memorial

Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1962, when the country sent Army advisers to South Vietnam in support of its allies from the United States. The first drafted Australian soldiers arrived in Vietnam in 1966. That year, the Australians began to set up a base at Nui Dat, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) west of the village of Long Tan. The base was about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), the South Vietnamese capital.

On August 17, the Viet Cong (Communist-led South Vietnamese guerrillas) fired artillery at Nui Dat. The next day, a group of Australian soldiers searched for the Viet Cong at a rubber plantation near Long Tan. The group, led by Major Harry Smith, consisted of 105 Australians and 3 New Zealanders. They soon encountered a group of Viet Cong troops that experts estimate was about 2,000 strong.

Battle of Long Tan
Credit: WORLD BOOK map

In a monsoon rain, Smith’s force fought the Viet Cong. American and Australian forces supported Smith’s company with artillery fired from the base at Nui Dat. After about three hours of fighting, and after Smith’s group had fought off several waves of Viet Cong attacks, Australian reinforcements arrived. Nightfall and the arrival of the reinforcements ended the battle.

Seventeen Australian soldiers died in the battle. Twenty-four others were injured, and one of those died of his injuries several days later. The Australians buried 245 Viet Cong soldiers after the battle, though captured documents indicated that hundreds of others had been killed.

A memorial called the Long Tan Cross marks the site of the battle. This year, in addition to Vietnam Veterans Day celebrations across Australia, a group of Australian veterans was scheduled to hold a low-key service at the battle site itself before a “friendship dinner” with Vietnamese veterans and a memorial concert. On August 17, however, the Vietnamese government decided to allow only small groups to access to the battle site for a limited amount of time, and the dinner and concert were canceled.

One of those who traveled to Vietnam for the ceremony was retired Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith, who recently made a successful petition to the Australian government to have 10 of his men receive military honors for their actions during the battle, or to have existing honors upgraded.

November 11, 2015

A bugler of the 27th Australian Infantry Battalion plays the “Last Post” at sundown in October 1941, near Hammana, Lebanon. Credit: Frank Hurley (Australian War Memorial)

Today, November 11, at eleven o’clock in the morning, millions of people around the world stopped what they were doing and observed two minutes of silence to remember those killed in global conflicts. November 11 is a holiday known as Veterans Day in the United States (where all who served, living or dead, are remembered) and Armistice or Remembrance Day in most other countries. The day marks the end of World War I in 1918. On that day, Germany accepted the armistice terms demanded by the Allies, ending what was then the most destructive war in world history. The somber November 11 holiday began in 1919, exactly one year after the guns fell silent.

In the United Kingdom and many other Commonwealth nations, the two-minute silence of Remembrance Day is punctuated by the playing of the “Last Post,” the bugle call that has long signified the end of the British Army’s day. Since the Crimean War of the 1850’s, however, the “Last Post” has also been played at soldiers’ burials. And since the end of World War I, the bugle call has sounded at commemorative ceremonies as well. The song symbolizes the final rest of those killed in battle.

In the United States, the bugle call of “Taps” is played at military funerals and memorial services—a practice spread widely during the American Civil War. “Taps” also originated as an end-of-day bugle call.

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November 11, 2014

This Veteran’s Day (known as Remembrance Day in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), in the centenary year of the start of World War I (July 28, 1914-November 11, 1918), at 11 am London time, the last ceramic poppy was placed in a moving art installation at the Tower of London.  Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red. The artist created a ceramic poppy for each British and Colonial military death during World War I. Since July, 888,246 poppies have been planted at the Tower, in a presentation meant to evoke blood pouring out of a Tower window and spilling over the land. With the placement of the last poppy, the installation will remain for 24 hours and then be taken down.

An art installation at the Tower of London, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, by artist Paul Cummins, memorializes the British and Colonial dead of World War I. (Martin Pettitt)

The poppy came to represent World War I because of a poem written by a Canadian physician who served in World War I, John McCrae. His poem, “In Flanders Fields,” begins with perhaps the best known lines concerning World War I.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Nov. 11, 2011

To mark Veterans Day on November 11, United States President Barack Obama spoke of the sacrifice of U.S. veterans and members of the armed services and placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Veterans Day, a legal holiday in the United States, honors men and women who have served in the U.S. armed services. Veterans Day is celebrated on November 11, the anniversary of the end of World War I (1914-1918). In 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as Armistice Day to remind Americans of the tragedies of war. In 1954, Congress changed the holiday’s name to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand observe November 11 as Remembrance Day to honor people who have died in war. The United Kingdom celebrates Remembrance Day on the Sunday closest to November 11.

The Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Va., honors members of the United States armed forces who have given their lives in war. A sentry guards this famous memorial day and night. This photo shows the changing of the guard at the tomb. Kurt Scholz, Shostal.

The Tomb of the Unknowns–originally called the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier–was completed in 1931. At first, it held only the body of one of the many American soldiers killed in battle in World War I who could not be identified. Congress later directed that an “Unknown American” from each of three wars–World War II (1939-1945), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1957-1975)–be buried beside the tomb. The Vietnam War unknown was the only American serviceman killed in that war whose remains could not be identified. At the time of the ceremony, however, more than 2,400 service members were still listed as missing. In 1998, DNA tests determined that the Vietnam War unknown was Michael Blassie, an Air Force lieutenant shot down over South Vietnam in 1972. Later in 1998, the remains of Lieutenant Blassie were moved to a veterans’ cemetery near St. Louis.

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the largest and most famous national cemeteries in the United States. The cemetery surrounds Arlington House, which was the home of General Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Confederate Army in the American Civil War (1861-1865). The U.S. government made Arlington a national cemetery in 1864.

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