Code Talker

During the last days of fighting on Guam, Ned gets shot in the shoulder by a Japanese sniper. He only remembers being carried to the medic by Georgia Boy. He later wakes up in the operating room on the hospital ship. The wound is small and, Ned says, hardly worth mentioning. Not everyone is able to carry on as easily as Ned does, though. Some men are hurt not physically, but in their spirits. The armed forces call this “battle fatigue.”

Ned says that battle fatigue is hard for many people to understand, especially people who have not been through combat themselves. Sufferers from battle fatigue were sometimes accused of cowardice. But Ned says that Navajos understand battle fatigue because their ancestors saw what war does to people’s spirits. The old Navajo stories tell how even the Holy People experienced such injury. After Monster Slayer killed the many beings that had been destroying the people, he was sickened from combat and killing. That’s when the Enemyway ceremony was created. Though Ned experiences battle fatigue himself, he is shipped back to the line as soon as he recovers from his physical wounds.