Honor Bound

[thedrifter]

Young Navajo follow in the footsteps of the code talkers



By Steve Schmidt
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Honor Bound
Young Navajo follow in the footsteps of the code talkers

Photos by Earnie Grafton
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

November 23, 2003

Friday night, May 30, 6 o'clock ...

Wind blowing through his ink-black hair, Nathaniel Bitsui stands on the chalky rim of the Grand Canyon. It's cloudy out. The dirt boils with bugs.

Nate graduates tonight, this spring evening. The Navajo boy wears a shiny red cap and gown to his Grand Canyon High School commencement, held on the rim. When it's over, he flings his cap into the air.

The next day he turns 18.

The day after that he's supposed to leave his northern Arizona home for Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego.

It's overwhelming, all this – first a graduation, then a milestone birthday, then boot camp. Take a deep breath, Nate tells himself. Steady yourself.

The night of his birthday, he starts crying.

"Are you all right?" asks his father, Francis Bitsui.

"I'm sad. I'm just sad."

Each year, 19,000 young men pass through the black metal gates of Marine Corps Recruit Depot near Lindbergh Field for the crucible called boot camp. Most are fresh out of high school and ache to start a new life, even if leaving the old one pains them. They're nervous, patriotic and a bit clueless.

Nate hoped to start boot camp in June. Julio Nez, another 18-year-old from Arizona, planned to start the same month.

They are keepers of a legacy – both are Navajo Indians, both burn to be Marines.

In World War II, the storied Navajo code talkers helped America defeat Japan. At Iwo Jima and other battles, the Marines Corps and the nation's largest Indian reservation forged a blood bond.

The red rock, sheep-studded Navajo Nation straddles three states – Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The Navajo have their own government and language, their own problems with alcohol and poverty, their own myths and proud ways.

Yet their ties to the leathernecks – and San Diego – run deep.

Signs of the Marines are everywhere on the reservation, from code talker displays inside fast-food stands to Semper Fi bumper stickers on pickup trucks. Even in remote corners of the sprawling territory, where rain turns the dirt roads to gumbo much of the year, it's not unusual to spot photographs of someone's dad or uncle at boot camp.

No one made Nate and Julio join.

They could stay home or, armed with their good grades, head to college and watch the war on terrorism on their dorm room TVs.

Or they could take the boldest leap of their lives and spend a grueling 13 weeks of training in San Diego.

Because it's in their bloodline.

Because it's a 9/11 world and they want a role in it.

Because they ache to be tested in ways young men have been tested for centuries.

They know nothing of battle, yet their thoughts are full of it, sometimes in ways others can't fathom. "I really want to see what war is like," Julio says.

But before they dive into the military, they must overcome another challenge: their final months at home, from the complicated goodbyes to the questions and fears that surface as war edges close.



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January 2003. President Bush declares Saddam Hussein a dire threat. In his State of the Union speech, the president says Iraq must be disarmed. And if the world won't move against Baghdad, U.S. forces will, Bush says. Thousands of Marines and other troops head to the Middle East.



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Nate walks alone in the rugged Arizona outback in January, gripping a Remington rifle.

It's beautiful and dangerous country; it's also his back yard.

Nate and his family live in the Navajo village of Cameron, Ariz., in a mobile home parked at the end of a dirt road. They have no indoor plumbing or electricity. Nearby is a wood outhouse and a small hogan, a traditional Navajo lodge.

Behind the home is a deep gorge with rattlesnakes, quicksand and gnarled rocks.

Nate likes to burrow for hours into the crevices of the rocky walls of the gorge. He stares through his rifle scope, talking to himself, imagining his place in the world. I'm a Marine sniper. I'm in Baghdad. I'm hunting terrorists.

Bammmmmmmmmmmmm!

The sound ricochets off the gorge's wine-tinted walls.

At 5 feet 10 inches tall, Nate has the lanky build of a long-distance runner, ideal for billy-goating from rock to rock through his back yard. He has brown eyes and walks with a slight slouch.

For a 17-year-old, he's refreshingly short on attitude. He opens doors for adults and watches his manners around girls. He has a tough time saying no.

"You are a nice guy," a classmate writes in Nate's Grand Canyon High yearbook. "Sometimes too nice."

He likes Snickers bars, Navajo fry bread and his white Ford pickup. He likes a lot of girls at school, too, but he has trouble keeping a relationship going more than a few weeks. He's not sure why.

"My truck is my most reliable girlfriend," he likes to joke.

His mom, Esther Bitsui, is a police dispatcher at Grand Canyon National Park. Francis Bitsui works on the park trail maintenance crew. Nate has two sisters, 14-year-old Yolanda and 19-year-old Illanda, who attends nursing school.

When Esther learns her son wants to join the Marines, it spooks her. Bush's saber-rattling State of the Union speech doesn't help.

But Nate has yearned to be a Marine since he was little. He's had relatives in the Marines and believes it's his calling. The call is so strong it overrides any doubts or fears. "It's a debt I owe to my ancestors, to the Navajo, to America."

Sept. 11, 2001, cemented his decision.

"Think of all the people who died in that," he says, clambering over rocks near his home. "Think of how many kids are motherless, fatherless or even orphans now."

Pearl Harbor packed the same punch.

In early 1942, just after the Japanese bombed Hawaii, Marine officers in San Diego turned to the isolated reservation for help. The Marines recruited hundreds of Navajo men to relay battlefield messages in a code based on the tribe's spoken tongue.

For decades, many white teachers on the reservation had discouraged – even physically beat – Navajo schoolchildren for speaking their complex native language.

Now their words were weapons.

After completing boot camp in San Diego, these new Marine code talkers steamed into the Pacific, into the teeth of the enemy.

"The hard-hitting leathernecks needed an unbreakable code and they got it," The San Diego Union reported in 1945. "For three years, wherever the Marines landed, the Japanese got an earful of strange gurgling noises interspersed with other sounds resembling the call of a Tibetan monk and the sound of a hot water bottle being emptied."

The marriage of two warrior worlds, Navajo and Marine, was sealed.

Today the Navy, Army and Air Force comb the reservation for new recruits, dangling money, scholarships and other perks. But the Marines offer something the hardy tribe finds deeply appealing: the challenge of Marine boot camp – the longest of any military branch – and the chance to be part of a historic legacy.

"A lot of recruiters can't persuade anybody to go anywhere else but the Marine Corps," says Marine recruiter Sgt. Gerald Nez, who is Navajo though not related to Julio.

Both the Navajo and the Marines are older than the country. The ancestors of the Navajo settled in the Southwest centuries ago. The Marines were formed in 1775.

Both hold their ghosts close. Navajo culture is rich with tales of spirits engaged in heroic deeds. Marines talk of their storied battles with dewy-eyed reverence.

Both are intensely patriotic, although the Navajo have little reason to be.

The U.S. government waged war on the tribe in the mid-1800s. Frontiersman Kit Carson and others raided their crops and livestock. Thousands of men, women and children were herded hundreds of miles to a desert camp. Many died, while the rest were kept in disease-ridden confinement for years.

Many Navajo still talk of the U.S. attacks and forced marches their ancestors endured.

Yet these are the same people who fought in World War II. The Navajo maintain a veterans cemetery on the reservation, covered with U.S. flags whipping in the wind.

These are the people who raised Nate.

Gorge-climbing, Remington-packing, I'm-fighting-terrorists Nate.

It's January and the high school senior has a job lined up with the Marines. If he survives boot camp, he'll join an elite squad guarding the White House and the president.

He's never been to San Diego. Now, it's almost all he thinks about.



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March. Bush demands Hussein leave Iraq within 48 hours or face war. There's no doubt Hussein possesses some of the most lethal weapons ever devised, Bush says. "We will help you build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free," he promises Iraqis.



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Julio Nez stares hard into a mirror.

The Chinle High School senior sits in art class, working on a self-portrait. It's a clear March day on the reservation, thousands of miles from Baghdad.

He stares again. Long eyelashes. A wisp of a goatee. A wide brown face, and broad shoulders built for the long haul.

When Julio decided to join the Marines, he wanted to sign up for 20 years. His recruiter wondered if he was joking. You can only sign up for four, he was told.

Twenty years? How gung-ho is that?

continued..........

[thedrifter]

But he's 18 years old. He's acting his age. He loves his hometown of Chinle, but he can't leave soon enough. "I'm just waiting for the day," he says.

Chinle sits on a broad plain in the heart of the reservation. It has a Burger King, a Taco Bell, a stone church, a shuttered airport, a strip mall and a supermarket with a bunch of pickup trucks parked out front.

Stray cattle sometimes strut past the town's lone stoplight.

Julio and his family live in a three-bedroom house built by the federal government decades ago. It needs fresh paint. There's a tree dying in the yard. Inside, the walls are lined with family photos and Navajo weavings. Julio keeps a TV in his bedroom, next to his favorite toy – his Xbox.

Julio could head to college. He has the grades. He could go to art school. He's won a string of awards for his drawings, mostly portraits of family.

But he's fixed on the Marines. Self-assured and burning with determination, he craves a Marine's life.

His oldest brother, Philbert Nez, was a leatherneck. The Nez family caravaned to San Diego in 1994 for his boot camp graduation. Little Julio, a third-grader at the time, watched in wonder and awe.

While in the Marines, Philbert specialized in maintaining aviation electronics. Julio wants to do the same.

Philbert never saw battle. He left the Marines four years ago. But now it's March 2003, and the United States is on the brink of war.

Julio's 19-year-old girlfriend, Ranae Bia, is worried. Are you really going into the Marines, she asks him. Are you serious? What about us?

Ranae wants to support Julio because he's always backed her. Ranae used to ditch high school a lot and smoke marijuana.

Julio persuaded her to stop. "He's the one who changed me from all the bad things," she says.

The Navajo Nation – a region six times the size of San Diego County – is full of similar stories. Many don't have happy endings.

Booze is banned on Navajo land, yet alcoholism remains the bane of the reservation. Bootleggers peddle beer and liquor out of trucks. Destitute and desperate for a buzz, some Navajo get high by drinking a dangerous mix of water and hair spray.

Alcoholism is one reason why the Navajo won't allow casinos on the 27,000-square-mile reservation. Many fear gambling will feed the addiction.

Alcoholism also fuels the reservation's violent crime rate, which is six times the national average. U.S. officials say about 40 percent of the violent crime on the nation's Indian reservations occurs on Navajo land.

With few jobs and a nearly Third World economy, 2 out of 5 Navajo live below the poverty line. Twenty-five percent are unemployed.

Julio's mom, Peggy Sue Nez, 49, runs a tribal-funded welfare-to-work program in Chinle, population 8,800. It tries to wean the locals off government handouts. A confident and ambitious woman, she's bent on improving the lot of her people. "I think we're living a life of confusion right now," she says.

Julio's dad, Harry Nez, 49, lives temporarily in Phoenix, where he's going to computer programming school. He used to fix automobiles for an living.

Harry visits the scenic reservation on weekends. To see the striking, open landscape again, beautiful in its barrenness, feeds the soul, he says.

Decades of social problems and overreliance on the government continue to fray life on the reservation, home to 180,000 people.

But it hasn't lost its resilient heart.

The Navajo language remains the dominant tongue in most towns. Family life revolves around an ancient clan system. On weekends, Navajo hogans come alive with purification ceremonies and other native rites. Medicine men sing through the starry night.

When the code talkers went to war, they fought not only to defend America, but also to protect their sacred territory.

"The major motivating factor for a lot of us is that we were fighting for our land, our Navajo land," recalls Peter MacDonald, 74, a World War II code talker and a former president of the Navajo Nation.

So it is with Julio's generation.

But right now, a few weeks before heading to San Diego, joining the U.S. military seems more like a grand adventure to Julio. Twenty years as a Marine? Why not?

He spends long hours playing "Halo" on his Xbox. In the video game, a laser-gun-packing Marine travels the universe, whacking aliens.

Julio knows the disturbing news out of Iraq. He tries not to dwell on it.

"If I think about it too much, I'll hesitate," he says.



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Late March. U.S. and British troops storm Iraq. Warplanes pummel Baghdad. Hussein remains defiant, but the Iraqi army seems to melt away. Among the first U.S. war dead is a Hopi Indian woman from the Navajo reservation.



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Peggy Sue Nez worries about Julio and her oldest son, Philbert. A member of the Army National Guard, Philbert may be shipped overseas to fight, she finds out.

"What do you think about the war?" she asks Julio as U.S. troops invade Iraq. "Are you at least scared?"

"I'm not afraid," he says. "If they ask me to go, I'll go."

"It's not like Xbox. It's not some video game."

"Yeah, I know, I know"

Meanwhile, Esther and Francis Bitsui keep up brave faces. They don't want to voice their worries to Nate. They don't want to cloud his head with doubt.

But privately, Esther mourns. It's tough enough to see your only son leave home and head for the military. But what's happening overseas makes it harder.

"The war makes it very impossible," she says. "I can't get a grip on it."

At school, Nate reads "The Red Badge of Courage" in English class. The Civil War classic is about a young man who joins the Union Army against his mother's wishes. He aches to fight, but in his first battle, the young man turns coward and runs.

At Grand Canyon High, which is off the reservation, Nate and his classmates discuss the novel. The teacher mentions the war in Iraq, then poses a question.

What does it take to be a good soldier?

The students pipe up.

"Know friend from foe."

"Get all fit and buff like Rambo."

"Shoot Saddam right between the eyes."

"You have to be pretty stupid to go to war in the first place."

"What?" asks the teacher.

"You have to be stupid to go to war."

"Do you think Nate is stupid?"

"No," the kid sputters.

Nate sits there and doesn't argue because he's heard this kind of talk before. Others around school, others his age, have told him he's dumb for doing this.

But what, he wants to know, is so stupid about standing up for your country?



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May. Hussein's regime is history. U.S.-led forces occupy Iraq. Bush stands on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, heading for San Diego, and declares a major victory in the war on terrorism. "We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide," he says.



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Take a deep breath, Nate tells himself. Steady yourself.

It's graduation night at Grand Canyon High, along the canyon's south rim. He's turning 18 and going to San Diego for the first time in his life.

"Come back a Marine," one of his recruiters tells him. "Don't come in my door unless you're in uniform."

To get ready over the spring, Nate jogged, often up the Grand Canyon's steep trails. Rifle in hand, he played more patriot games in his back yard gorge.

Mentally, he's on edge. He thinks he'll do OK in boot camp, but how can he be sure? About 10 percent of recruits never make it to graduation.

His family gives him a small leather pouch filled with corn pollen, a form of Navajo blessing. They say it'll protect him in boot camp.

His mother is doing better now that the war in Iraq appears to be winding down. She's deeply proud of her son but feels a sense of loss.

At the Phoenix airport, before boarding the plane for San Diego, Nate hugs his parents. Then, just like that, he walks away, refusing to linger. Nate worries if he stays in that spot, his mother's arms around him, that he'll cry, too. He doesn't want that.

In Chinle, the goodbyes are also complicated.

A restless Julio writes a letter to his mother, declaring his long-awaited independence. He writes that he can't wait to leave.

Peggy Sue takes it in stride. She's happy the worst of the war in Iraq appears to be over. She wants Julio to know he has her complete support, despite her initial misgivings about Iraq.

Julio and his girlfriend, Ranae, promise to write each other a lot.

Physically, there's no question he's ready. He's buff from months of jogging and weight lifting. His Marine recruiters expect great things from him. He expects great things from himself; he has a legacy to live up to.

Before heading to San Diego, Julio receives the blessings of his family during an all-night ceremony inside a hogan. His grandfather, a medicine man, offers prayers and sings ancient songs of protection. The Nez family sits on sheepskin blankets spread on the dirt floor.

That same day, Harry Nez tells a story, one his son has never heard.

Harry says he wanted to join the Marines once. He even went to boot camp in San Diego, but was discharged because of severe acne. He was later granted a medical waiver and given another chance to join, he tells a surprised Julio. But he didn't follow up.

continued.........

[thedrifter]

It's the biggest regret of his life.

"I am proud of you, son," Harry says.

Julio arrived at Marine Corps Recruit Depot on June 16. Nate came two weeks earlier. The two recruits knew each other before boot camp, but not well.

Both arrived at night, spilling out of a bus packed with raw recruits. Marine sergeants with barrel chests barked in their frightened faces. Take off your hats! Take off your piercings! Take off your clothes! Put on your new clothes! Get your head shaved! Now!

So began their summer in boot camp.

Then came Black Friday, the day when recruits sit on the floor of their barracks and meet the men who will be their drill instructors for the next three months.

That's putting it politely. Black Friday is when the already-shaken, sleep-starved Marine wannabees meet the men who will take them to hell and back.

Starting right now.

"GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! FASTER! FASTER! FASTER! FASTER!"

Orders fly.

"Get in line," the drill instructors scream.

"Yes, sir!"

"Make your beds."

"Yes, sir!"

"Get your seabags! We don't call them duffel bags here; we call them seabags."

"Yes, sir!"

"You better pick up that seabag or I'M GOING TO CHOKE THE F----N' LIFE OUT OF YOU!"

Even the hardiest recruits waver. Doubts creep in. Julio and Nate question themselves. I volunteered for this? What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing here?

I've made a terrible mistake.

This story concludes tomorrow.

Steve Schmidt: (619) 293-1380; steve.schmidt@uniontrib.com.

Union-Tribune library researcher Danielle Cervantes contributed to this report.

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The Drifter

[thedrifter]

Boot camp tests recruits from the Navajo Nation



By Steve Schmidt
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 24, 2003

Julio Nez thought he had things figured out, but at this moment, with three beastly Marine Corps drill instructors going medieval on him, he's not sure of anything.

One of the instructors – the one with the reddest face – keeps snarling and cussing.

"I can turn my pain meter up alllll daaaaay lonnnnnnnnngg!"

Julio has been at Marine Corps Recruit Depot near downtown San Diego a few days, and right now, crowded in the barracks with hundreds of recruits, the 18-year-old wonders if he made the right decision. He's left his family, friends and girlfriend in northeast Arizona for the longest and toughest boot camp training in the U.S. military, a 13-week test of body and spirit.

What's more, he's volunteered in wartime. Others his age are beginning college or hunting for jobs.

Julio is a Navajo, and to his tribe the Marines are a special calling. The warrior cultures bonded in World War II, when hundreds of Navajo, trained in San Diego, served as Marine code talkers in the bloody victory over Japan.

The same flame of patriotism burns in men such as Julio Nez and Nathaniel Bitsui. Both left the harsh and gorgeous Navajo Nation, America's largest reservation, in June to begin the crucible of Marine training.

Leaving home was tough – and not tough at all. Both men weathered the teary goodbyes, but also ached to move on and start their adult lives.

But will they survive boot camp? After four days in San Diego, the drill instructors are doing their bad-guy shuffle, yelling and screaming and reminding everyone who's in charge, and they better not freakin' forget it because they're nothing but a bunch of nasty recruits!

This is the Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps. Boot camp is supposed to transform the nation's youth – jocks, gangbangers, farm kids – into a brotherhood of Marines worthy of an elite fighting force.

Behind the gates of the recruit depot, a football toss from San Diego Bay, the newcomers will bunk together, shower together, shoot and clean rifles together. Over marathon days, they'll learn to march and endure the roars of their teachers.

"You will give 100 percent of yourselves at all times. You will obey all orders willingly, instantly and WITHOUT QUESTION!" yells Staff Sgt. David Baldock, Julio's senior drill instructor. "Above all else, you will never QUIT, and you will NEVER, EVER GIVE UP!"

Some won't make it. About 10 percent of recruits don't graduate. Some are injured, others attempt or feign to attempt suicide.

Julio and Nate, keepers of a Navajo legacy, begin boot camp with deep doubts. Their ancestors survived the same training and went on to do their people proud.

Julio and Nate pray they will, too.



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In early June, Nate reports to Platoon 2093, Golf Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion.
Two weeks later, Julio reports to Platoon 1006, Charlie Company, 1st Recruit Training Battalion.

With their freshly shaved heads and green camouflage uniforms, it's hard to tell some recruits apart. Others stick out:


Mambasse Patara, 28, of Los Angeles. Patara grew up in Togo, in
western Africa, where his father is a tribal king with six wives and 33 children. Patara, whose face is covered with ritual scars, is to succeed his father as king.


Ricardo Gomez, 19, of suburban Dallas. The Texan is here to get back at his deadbeat dad. Gomez says his estranged father went AWOL from boot camp years ago. He also ditched Gomez's mother when she was pregnant with him. "I want to prove I can stand one of the toughest boot camps there is," Gomez says.

A recruit with a secret. The Marines rejected the man a few years ago after he admitted having childhood asthma. Now in his 20s and fit as an ox, he signed up again, but kept his mouth shut about any medical wrinkles. "I wanted so bad to be a Marine," he says.

The same hunger drove Nate. Back home in Cameron, Ariz., the 18-year-old dreamed of being a leatherneck.
Cameron is on the western edge of the Navajo reservation and near Grand Canyon National Park.

The kinship between the Marines and Navajo goes beyond their blood bond from World War II. Both stand apart from society. Both know the Spartan life.

Back home, Nate sometimes slept in the back of his white pickup, under the stars.

A few days into boot camp, Nate is homesick. He longs for friends, his truck and the red rock landscape of home.

It doesn't help that his drill instructors berate him for his slight slouch and for not speaking loudly enough. They say he lacks confidence, mistaking his Navajo reserve for weakness.

"Open your freakin' mouth!" they tell him.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"LOUDER!"

"Aye, aye, SIR!"

The days grind – 5:30 a.m., recruits leap from their bunk beds in boxer shorts and get dressed as roll is called; 5:35 a.m., they march to chow hall for a quick breakfast; 7 a.m., they head to physical training, running laps or conducting combat drills; 9:30 a.m., they sit in a class – "Marine Corps History," "Heroes of the Corps," "The Sexual Responsibilities of a Male Marine."

On goes a typical day. More classes, more marching and more running, while singing in cadence.

"My Marine Corps colors are red

To show the world the blood we shed

My Marine Corps colors are gold

To show the world the traditions we hold."

Each platoon is housed in a long, narrow barrack lined with squeaky bunk beds. The windows often rattle from the noise of the nearby airport. There's no TV, no radio, no privacy.

Life is simple on the Navajo reservation, too, but at least there are wide open spaces rich in landscape and silence. The Navajo recruits miss the quiet.

At boot camp, the only free time comes before they are ordered to bed, which is around 9:30 p.m. They commiserate and write letters home. Some read the Bible.

Nate nurses the blisters on his feet and gets to know his new brother in arms, 18-year-old George Skeet. George is also in Platoon 2093 and Navajo. He has the same honey-brown skin as Nate.

Inspired by the World War II code talkers, George wants to specialize in Marine communications.

George is homesick, too. But at least there's Nate. Sometimes before bed, they pray together, whispering in Navajo.

Sh'zhŽ'Ž l'n'', T‡helin'', Sh'ch' d' l'n'', T‡ ts's- tsodizin ...

For others, faith isn't enough. The mental and physical strain overwhelms. Within the first two weeks of boot camp, several Golf Company recruits are gone. Some are injured in training. A couple run away, but are caught.

At least three men attempt suicide. One tries to slash his wrist with a ballpoint pen.

Drill instructors act cavalier about many things. Suicide is not one of them. They're under orders to refer the most troubled recruits to depot psychiatrists.

Some 19,000 men begin boot camp at the recruit depot each year. About 10 percent don't finish. Navajo recruits and other American Indians have a slightly lower dropout rate.

The Marines say many American Indians – perhaps weaned on rugged living – adapt easily to the Corps. Marine watchwords like honor and commitment also speak to tradition-minded Indians.

For most recruits, the shock of training eases after a couple of weeks, even if the location of the male-only boot camp grates.

Much of the nation's only other Marine boot camp, Parris Island in South Carolina, is set in a bug-ridden bog. Women and men are trained on the island.

The San Diego boot camp, the 388-acre compound off Pacific Highway, is a tease. Recruits see the bright lights of downtown and the palm trees swaying near the waterfront. They suck in the ocean air and picture themselves on the sand, perhaps with a girlfriend. Until Nate arrived here in June, he had never seen the ocean.

In Platoon 1006, Julio gets over his shock and relishes boot camp. If anything, he says out of earshot of his drill instructors, it's too easy.

On the depot jogging track and obstacle course, while others gasp for air, Julio hardly sweats.

His senior drill instructor, Staff Sgt. Baldock, is impressed. Julio is promoted to squad leader. "You can tell he really wants to be here," Baldock says.

Julio writes his family back in tiny Chinle, Ariz., about his quick success. They're not surprised.

He's impatient, though, with some recruits in his platoon. Not all are gung-ho like him. Some are chronic screw-ups, he complains in his first letter home.

"Damn, I never knew how dumb these white people are. They don't listen.

"I'm doing fine," he also writes his family. "I'm having a lot of fun here."



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Julio seems invincible. A month into training, he can knock out 12 pull-ups. He does 80 sit-ups in three minutes with no problem. He runs a 6-minute mile. The months he spent getting buff back on the reservation pay off.
Then Superman finds his kryptonite.

About 2 a.m. one day, Baldock spots Julio sticking his hands in his pockets while on guard duty, a sin in the military.

Baldock scrawls two words on a platoon message board: "KILL NEZ." It's a cue to other drill instructors to give the recruit a hard time.

That same morning, Julio takes his initial swim test, but discovers he can't tread water. He flails in the depot's indoor pool, slipping into a panic.

Someone tosses him a life preserver and Julio flops out of the water, his tongue sticking out. A Marine captain tries to pull him up, but he's dizzy and weak.

"I can't get up," Julio murmurs. "I can't do this."

A doctor checks his pulse while the drill instructors unload on him.

"Nez is a weak *****!" roars one sergeant.

"You are a disgrace to your race!" yells another. "You are a disgrace to the code talkers!"

continued....

[thedrifter]

Baldock fires Julio as squad leader. The Navajo later heads back to the pool, passing the treading test on his second try.

But Julio is humbled. He expected more of himself.

He's not mad at the drill instructors for attacking him. He says they're just doing their jobs.

Hollywood likes to portray Marine drill instructors as human Rottweilers. At their most beastly, they're worse. In the eyes of recruits, they're the spawn of Satan – cackling, red-faced, lunatics.

The barking men in the green hats make life in boot camp hell because war is hell. It's not pretty or politically correct. They make things tough because they say it's better to test a man's mettle here, in the safety of San Diego, than in Baghdad. How a Marine handles extreme stress makes the difference between life and death on the battlefield.

That's why Baldock punishes his platoon every time even one recruit messes up while marching in formation.

"I damn told you you must give a 100 percent effort at all times," he tells them one morning.

"Yes, sir!"

"At all times, no matter WHAT!"

"Yes, sir!"

"I don't care if you just got out of class and you're tired. Do you think those Marines and soldiers over in Iraq, in fighting holes, getting two or three hours of sleep a night, waking up and getting into firefights, do you think they like that? Do you think they like that trash?"

"No, sir!"

"Do they think it's fun?"

"No, sir!"

Baldock orders his platoon into a dirt pit for a punishing round of push-ups and other exercises. Then he turns away, grinning.

He became a leatherneck in 1996 at the age of 24. He once owned a martial arts school in Indiana. He drives a red sports car, attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and speaks with a raspy, Bill Clinton twang.

He says being a drill instructor is fun but draining. He strikes a tender tone he wouldn't dare show with recruits. "I love working with youth," he says.

Staff Sgt. Allen Mullis, 29, the senior drill instructor of Nate's platoon, ran with a street gang when he was young. His mother was a crack addict. He wears tattoos and drives a Suzuki motorcycle.

He tells recruits that if he can succeed, they can, too. "If it wasn't for the Marine Corps, I honestly don't know where I'd be in life."

Joining the Marines borders on entering a religious order. They have their own creed, hymn and prayer. They see themselves as special – outside the mainstream, yet great protectors of the mainstream.

Marines, after all, raised the flag at Iwo Jima in World War II. In a scene televised around the globe last spring, Marines toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein.

The Marine Corps was born in a Philadelphia tavern 228 years ago. It remains America's rawest expression of military might.

Right now, however, many recruits just feel raw. It's mid-July and the platoons head to Camp Pendleton for a month of field training. Nate still aches for home, for Navajo fry bread, for the peace of his village. Julio failed his first trial in the pool.

Now comes the biggest test of all.



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The Marines call it The Crucible, and it makes the first few weeks of boot camp look like a warm-up.
For 54 hours, with limited sleep and food, recruits weather a grueling series of physical tests at Camp Pendleton, capped by a six-mile march up a mountain.

The first day, Julio's nerves are frayed. During a field exercise, he snaps at a recruit for moving slowly. The recruit slugs him in the nose.

The second day, everyone is dragging. Julio's anger flares again as his squad botches an obstacle course. "We have hit our explosion point," Baldock tells them.

Early the next morning, after four hours of sleep, the recruits rise at 3 a.m. to march up the mountain the Marines call the Grim Reaper. They haul heavy packs. The moon lights their way.

"Death is coming to them," roars one drill instructor.

But to Julio and Nate, the moment feels more like a rebirth. They no longer recognize their younger selves, the boys they were back home. After two months in boot camp, they've shed that skin. Now they march in the footsteps of the code talkers.

At 6:30 a.m., Julio's platoon begins the last, hard stretch to the top.

Julio sees the blue-orange sky, the cottonwood trees, the thick desert brush. The open land reminds him of the reservation, and he finds strength in that.

Each platoon marches shoulder-to-shoulder, up, up, up. A few recruits fall back. One defecates in his pants, but keeps marching. In less than an hour, Platoon 1006 makes it to the top, running the final yards, squeezing out the last drop of adrenaline.

On the mountaintop, an ocean breeze strokes their faces as a Marine commander congratulates them.

"Look around. This is your family now," he says. "This is the family that is going to protect the nation."

It's the end of August, just before graduation, and Nate wonders if his family will recognize him. "It's like I have a totally new identity," he says.
Staff Sgt. Mullis believes Nate still lacks confidence. "Bitsui is more like – I don't want to say he's a girl. He's an average recruit," Mullis says.

This angers Nate. He's perplexed why people keep mistaking his reserve for weakness. "I pretty much stand firm. I have a lot of confidence. I do good at everything I do," he says.

This image of being soft could dog him. Nate plans to join a Marine unit guarding the White House in Washington, D.C., and it's critical he show the right stuff.

Nate's family – his parents, two sisters, grandmother and others – caravan from Arizona to the recruit depot for his morning graduation. Poverty and other problems continue to fray Navajo culture, but the tribe's sense of clan remains strong.

Nate's mother, Esther Bitsui, spots him marching with his platoon and dabs her eyes. His hair is shorter than she's ever seen it, his shoulders broader. He stands flagpole straight.

"He looks so serious," she says. "He looks different."

Nate sees changes, too. He's more disciplined, outgoing. Surviving boot camp makes him believe anything is possible.

Julio feels different, too. His life has new meaning. He's on a warrior's path and when he thinks of some old friends back home, the ones who drink alcohol or ditch school, he has no patience for them.

The day before his September graduation, he receives a pin of the Marine Corps emblem – an eagle, globe and anchor. He's earned some of the highest test scores in his platoon.

Baldock hands his recruits the pin during a ceremony on the depot's parade grounds.

American flags stir in the breeze. Family and friends watch from a row of bleachers, including Julio's siblings, his girlfriend and parents, Peggy Sue and Harry Nez.

Julio spots his loved ones and begins to weep.

It's Sept. 11, two years after the cataclysm at the World Trade Center. The Navajo answered the call of World War II. Now a new generation answers the call of a nation at war.

"I am he who kills the monsters. I shall act for the People once more," goes a traditional Navajo chant.

The next day, Julio graduates. Baldock marches Platoon 1006 onto the parade grounds one last time as a brass band strikes up "The Marines' Hymn."

Hundreds of family and friends watch from the bleachers, their camcorders whirring, dabbing their eyes.

Julio's family giggles at him, looking all stiff while in formation. He fights a smile.

Later, after Julio's family warms him with hugs, the Nez clan runs into Baldock. Easing up on his drill instructor act, he praises Julio.

"If every kid came to me like he came to me, my job wouldn't be hard at all," he says.

Julio beams.

"Go get 'em now," Baldock says. "Now you're on your own."

About 600 men graduated from boot camp that day, Sept. 12, a small slice of the 17,000 graduating this year. Once out, they get 10 days of liberty.

Nate heads to Cameron, but can't shake his boot camp habits. He calls his mother "Ma'am."

Folks around his village and at Grand Canyon National Park, where he went to high school, praise him for signing up. Others still don't understand his decision.

He doesn't argue. He smiles, sure of a season well spent.

"Joining the Marines was probably the smartest thing I've ever done," he says.

Julio returns to Chinle, in the heart of the Navajo reservation, milking every moment with his family and his longtime girlfriend, 19-year-old Ranae Bia.

The future nags. He's heading to a Marine base in Florida soon to study aviation electronics. Will he be happy so far from the reservation? What about Ranae? They're talking marriage.

For now, he tries to sleep in and catch up with people.

He stops by his old school, Chinle High, in his new uniform. He's a Marine now – Pvt. Julio J. Nez. Teachers shake his hand. Students stare in envy. Julio steps into a crowded cafeteria and applause breaks out.



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Pvt. Julio Nez is in Pensacola, Fla., studying aviation electronics with the Marines. He hopes to make it home for the holidays.
Pvt. George Skeet is in communication electronics school at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms.

Pvt. Nathaniel Bitsui is in Chesapeake, Va., training to join the Marine unit protecting the White House. He calls home on weekends and still misses his pickup.

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[thedrifter]

The unbreakable code

In World War II, the U.S. military turned to the Navajo to help win the war
By Greg Magnus and Yvette de la Garza
SIGNONSANDIEGO
June 10, 2002

World War II pushed science and technology to new heights. Radar and the atomic bomb both were forged from the fire of war.

The early successes of German and Japanese forces against the Allies are attributed largely to the superiority of their war machines. German and Japanese planes flew farther and faster, their tanks were more powerful and better armored, and their troops were hardened by previous campaigns.

And as Allied technology improved, so did their success on the battlefield.

One decisive weapon employed by the U.S. military, however, was not a new technology. It was an ancient, unwritten language: Navajo.

U.S., German and Japanese militaries each employed code languages as means of communicating information regarding troop movements and military intelligence. Previous attempts to create an unbreakable code relied heavily upon newly emerging technology like that of the German Enigma machine.

These predecessors to modern-day computers used mathematical calculations and rotating sequences of numbers and letters known as "superencipherment" in hopes of developing an unbreakable encryption.

Yet despite their complex structures, all the world's supercodes – codes such as FISH, RATTLER and PURPLE – were cracked. PURPLE was the code U.S. forces deciphered that revealed Japan's intent to attack Midway Island.

The swift, devastating attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II. U.S. communication experts struggled to invent new codes, only to have the Japanese break them nearly as quickly as they were created.

Philip Johnston, a civil engineer and World War I veteran, heard of the military's need for an unbreakable code. Johnston believed the code could be found in the American Indian reservations of the Southwest – specifically, the Navajo.

The son of a missionary, Johnston spent much of his childhood with the Navajo. At the time, he was one of only about 30 non-Navajo who spoke the language. He knew the Choctaw language was used in World War I and thought Navajo might provide the base for an unbreakable code.

Johnston approached the military with the idea and in February 1942, he and a group of Navajos traveled to the Marine base at Camp Elliott in San Diego.

During a demonstration, skeptical officers watched as different types of military messages were encoded, transmitted and then decoded back into English, each within 20 seconds.

Using specialized coding equipment it would have taken military communication operators as long as two hours to perform the same task.

Intrigued, the military agreed to grant Johnston a trial team of 30 code talkers. He scoured the reservations for volunteers. Candidates had to be competent in both Navajo and English, as well as meet the physical requirements of the U.S. Marine Corps. They found 29 men.

After completing boot camp at Camp Pendleton, the men were sent to the newly established Navajo Communication School at Camp Elliott in May of 1942. Over the course of the next several months, the code talkers developed code words for more than 260 military terms. The Japanese were knowledgeable of American language and culture, so the Navajo turned instead to nature and their own culture.

Military words like "battleship" and "destroyer" became "whale" and "shark" in the new code. Bombs became "eggs," and "fighter planes" were "hummingbirds."

Navajo words took the place of single letters in the English alphabet to spell out words not found in the Navajo language. Names of locations, such as Saipan or Guadalcanal, were spelled using the Navajo words for "ant," "apple" or "ax" to represent the repeated letter "a."

To further complicate the code, words were used in combinations which, when said aloud, sounded similar to the English word. The Navajo TASHI-NA-HAL-THIN literally translated means "turkey rain," which when spoken sounds similar to "terrain." Words with no equivalent Navajo meaning that were repeated within English messages, like "are" and "the" were given names like "jackrabbit" and "bluejay" to maintain the speed of transmissions and prevent the Japanese from breaking the new code.

Each code talker memorized the code words and alphabet system. There would be no written codebooks used in battle.

The code talkers' were deployed for the first time in August 1942 at the Battle of Guadalcanal when the 1st U.S. Marine Division launched an attack against Japanese forces occupying the island in a battle that lasted nearly four months. The toll was heavy. More than 1,700 Marines lost their lives and four heavy cruisers were sunk.

Eventually the island was taken by U.S. forces and the code talkers had proven themselves in battle. The Marines were impressed with their skill, speed and accuracy.

The code talkers' greatest test, however, was still more than two years away

In February 1945, three U.S. Marine divisions stormed the black sand beaches of Iwo Jima while 24,000 heavily fortified Japanese soldiers lay in wait. Six Navajo code talkers worked around the clock during the first two days of fighting, sending and receiving more than 800 messages without a single error.

The monthlong assault became one of the hardest-fought and costliest battles of the war. More than 6,800 Marines and 20,000 Japanese soldiers died. On March 26, 1945, U.S. forces took the island.

The code talkers role in the battle was crucial. Maj. Howard Connor, the signal officer for the 5th Marine Division at Iwo Jima, said of the code talkers, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."

Despite their extensive knowledge of the English language and American slang, the code confounded the Japanese. The Navajo code talkers had created the only unbreakable code in military history.

Over the course of World War II, more than 400 Navajos served as code talkers, participating in every major Marine offensive in the Pacific. A few went on to serve during both the Korean and Vietnam wars as well.

The Navajo code language was so successful that it remained classified until 1968, and it would take another 33 years for the contributions of the Navajo code talkers to be recognized.

In July, 2001, code talker Chester Nez and the four other surviving members of the original 29 code talkers were awarded Congressional Gold Medals.

Nez said he had been confident the efforts of the Navajo during World War II would not go unrecognized.

"All the code talkers who fought overseas felt that someday the people would know," he said.

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