Let’s face it, codes are fun. It’s fun to have a secret language, it’s fun (up to a point) to try to decipher someone else’s secret language. One of my favorite stories along these lines involves some good family friends—my dad gave a book about hieroglyphs to one of the kids when she was 9 or 10, and she ran with it—used it to pass notes in class, and then was more than happy to hand over the paper when she got caught and the teacher announced she would read whatever it said to the whole class. Obviously, that did not happen.

But codes aren’t all fun and games, obviously. There’s Samuel Morse. Alan Turing.

And then there are the Navajo Code Talkers.

Surely anyone who has stumbled over here already knows these guys were United States service members during both World Wars who used Native American languages to transmit secret messages.

Some details: Approximately 400 to 500 Native American Marines transmitted messages over military telephone or radio using codes built from their indigenous languages. The code talkers and are credited with some decisive victories, and their code was never broken. Several tribes were involved, but the Navajo (Diné) were probably the most famous group, working in the Pacific theater during World War II, taking part in every assault the US Marines conducted there from 1942 to 1945..

Two code types involving Native American languages were used during World War II. One was a formal, structured thing using Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki, and Navajo words for each letter of the English alphabet. The other code was informal and just flipped English into the indigenous language. Wikipedia notes that short, descriptive phrases sometimes had to be subbed in for military words and gives the example of “iron fish” for “submarine.”

Sorta like the Buffalo Soldiers before them, a lot of these guys joined the military—in World War I, particularly, to gain respect or improve circumstances for themselves and their families. I’m not sure how great they thought the Argonne Forest was when they got there, and I couldn’t find any record of whether their lives changed dramatically if they made it home and got discharged.

If you’re looking for a movie about these guys, you’re pretty much out of luck unless you stick with documentaries. There is a Nic Cage movie set in World War II that’s about them, but you have to squint to see them. It’s more about guys assigned to protect the code talkers. I recommend avoiding this mess, unless you’re looking for something to make fun of and be annoyed by—it’s also a real downer and pretty badly executed. That’s too bad, because—again, like the Buffalo Soldiers—there are some great stories that could be told here. C’mon Hollywood. Let’s get on these things!