Joseph Oklahombi

Joseph Oklahombi (May 1, 1895 - April 13, 1960) was a Choctaw soldier in the United States Army during the First World War.^[1] He was the most-decorated World War I soldier from Oklahoma. One of the Choctaw code talkers, he served in Company D, First Battalion, 141st Regiment, Seventy-first Brigade of the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division during World War I.

On October 8, 1918, Private Oklahombi was at Saint-Étienne, France. He and 23 other soldiers attacked an enemy position and captured 171 Germans while killing some 79 more. They held their position for four days while under attack.^[2] Oklahombi was awarded the Silver Star with Victory Ribbon, and the Croix de Guerre from France's Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain. At the time the members of the Choctaw nation were not formally U.S. citizens.^[3]

Oklahombi was married and had a son. He was killed on 13 April 1960 when hit by a truck driver while walking along a road. From Chief Gary Batton of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma:

Many of you know the story of the Choctaw Code Talkers of WWI and WWII and also the story of Code Talker Joseph Oklahombi, along with 23 other soldiers captured 171 Germans after moving 200 yards over open ground against artillery and machine gun fire, rushing a machine gun nest and capturing one of the guns. They not only turned the gun on the enemy for four days, keeping them under fire, they were without food and water those four days, killing numerous enemy soldiers until the rest surrendered. Although [retroactively] awarded … the Silver Star and Marshal Pétain, former Commander-in-Chief of the French Armies of the East, awarded them the Croix de Guerre, the Congressional Medal of Honor was never presented. It is a long-overdue recognition and I am working to see the Medal of Honor presented to Oklahombi and all 23 other heroes.^[4]

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