It was a military role that placed individuals in the front lines of some of the most intense combat of the war, in conditions of extreme physical and psychological stress, performing a specialized technical function while simultaneously performing the general duties of Marine infantry.

Code Talkers were not rear-echelon specialists.

They were forward with the fighting units they supported, often in positions where they were exposed to the same fire as the infantrymen around them.

A Code Talker who could not transmit because he was dead or wounded was a communications outage that commanders could not afford, which meant that protecting Code Talkers was a genuine operational consideration.

Some units assigned additional personnel specifically to accompany Code Talkers and provide them some additional security in heavily exposed positions.

A persistent popular claim about the Code Talker program holds that every Code Talker had a personal bodyguard who was under orders to kill him if capture appeared imminent — to prevent the Navajo language from becoming available to Japanese interrogation.