Once a week or so youngster Aspen Smith visits the Montana Veterans’ Home in Columbia Falls with his mother Lehnora and he plays cards with veteran Ed Day.

“He cheats,” Day joked.

The two play poker mostly and Day is starting to teach Smith, a fourth grader in Jane Dew’s Glacier Gateway Elementary School class, how to play cribbage.

They got to talking one day and Day mentioned years ago that he once met three of the “code talkers” of World War II. Intrigued by the stories Day and other veterans at the home told Smith, the young man began doing research on code talkers himself for his “Great Brain” Project for school.

Code talkers were Native Americans whose language was used as a code for military intelligence in both World War I and World War II. The Navajo language, for example, was completely unknown to the enemy in the Pacific, and about 30 Navajo soldiers were used in the theater to relay military intelligence back to the commanders using their language and a system whereby a double code, one in English and one in Navajo, was used.

Smith earlier this month taught the students in his class how to code their own names, which used a Navajo word for every English letter. 

Strung out, the code was nearly impossible to break and almost impossible to pronounce for his classmates.

In 1969, the code declassified and revealed to the general public, Smith discovered. In 2001 President George W. Bush recognized surviving code talkers John Brown, Chester Nez, Lloyd Oliver, Allen Dale June and Joe Palmer, (represented by his son Kermit) with Congressional gold medals for their service as code talkers in World War II.

Some of the code talkers were very young, like Albert Smith, who joined the Marines at 15. In order to enlist, he said, “I had to advance my age a little bit,” at the ceremony.

 At least one code talker was over-age, so he claimed to be younger in order to serve. On active duty, their value was so great, and their order so sensitive, that they were closely guarded. By war’s end, some 400 Navajos had served as code talkers. Thirteen were killed in action, according to a transcript of the ceremony.

“Code talkers were a bigger help than most people think,” Smith noted.

Smith loves history. Gateway teacher Mary Ellen Getts told him that she’s judged literally hundreds of Great Brain entries over the years and his was in the top five.

“You know your stuff,” she told him. “You can tell you studied it in depth.”

Smith said he hopes to go into the Air Force after he graduates high school as he wants to learn to fly airplanes. His uncle, he said, has a small plane and he’s flown in that.

In the meantime he continues to volunteer at the veterans’ home and enjoys beating Day at cards.