Nineteenth September 1944. Some 40,000 Allied troops descend behind enemy lines in the largest airborne assault in history. Their mission was to break through the defences and penetrate into Germany. It was the start of a fierce decisive battle, part of the Allies’ plan to push the enemy back into Germany.
But disaster struck.
Tens of thousands of American and British troops were stranded at Arnhem in the Netherlands during one of the boldest attacks of the Second World War. The Parachute Regiment was cut off from the rest of the army and surrounded by the Germans. All their radio systems had failed and, unable to make contact and request reinforcements, they looked lost.
With two elite SS divisions closing the ring around the British troops, the enemy was outnumbered and the Allies were running out of ammunition. The German troops were ten times stronger in numbers and well connected to supplies in the rear.
The encircled Allies were threatened with capture or total annihilation, and their only hope was additional reinforcements, which they could not call in because of a simple mistake. All communications failed because the radios they had with them were not working, because they had taken the wrong crystals, and without them the radios were completely useless.
At the height of the most technically advanced war ever fought, their only hope of survival was an elite unit of pigeon scribes.
Pigeons, the message carriers
The pigeon is considered the first domesticated bird. Human and pigeon paths crossed in the Stone Age, eight or perhaps even ten millennia ago, when both inhabited rock caves. In ancient civilisations and cultures, pigeons represented deities, and the white pigeon is still considered a symbol of peace today.
Its domestication is mentioned in both Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphs more than 5000 years ago. Pigeons were first domesticated for food and pets, and were probably first used as message carriers by the Persians, who realised that pigeons were ideal messengers because of their natural physical endurance, strong flight muscles and good orientation.
The Sumerians were the first to cross white pigeons with wild pigeons, hence the incredible number of colour combinations that can be seen in any ordinary flock of city pigeons.
In Ancient Greece, they were supposedly used for postal purposes to announce the winners of the Olympic Games, and to this day white doves are still released into the sky at the opening of the Games. Alexander the Great also sent messages home with pigeons from his campaigns of battle and conquest. In 52 BC, Julius Caesar used a pigeon to send a message to Rome about his victory over the Gauls. Pigeons were used as carriers of mail in war and peace, as well as for political, commercial and private purposes.
In the Arab world, they were called royal angels. After 1550, the Crusaders brought them back to Europe. In the 16th century, the first dovecotes were built in towers, but only noblemen had the right to build them. In the absence of the telegraph and modern communications, man used carrier pigeons to transmit messages quickly. In Britain, Napoleon‘s defeat at Waterloo was first known by a message tied to the leg of a pigeon.
In the 19th century, pigeon posting was an official postal service throughout France. Pigeon mail, which was used by the besieged Parisians to communicate with the outside world during the Franco-Prussian War, is perhaps the most famous of them all. From September 1870 until February 1871, when the normal postal links were cut and the telegraph wires were cut, most communication with the outside world was carried out by pigeons.
Just over 300 carrier pigeons were ballooned out of the besieged city. One of the pigeons was released after landing to return to Paris, a message that the pigeons had landed happily in French hands. Later, 57 more pigeons returned to the city, with a message for the besieged citizens attached to one of their legs or tail feathers. The remaining pigeons fell victim to Prussian rifles, the cold, hunger or the hawks hastily introduced by the besieging Germans to intercept the French feathered messengers.
The famous Rothschild family also enriched themselves with the help of pigeons. In the early years of the 19th century, it set up a veritable network of pigeon-keepers throughout Europe. These birds were the fastest to transmit vital financial information between institutions and the rapid transmission of information contributed to the family’s wealth.
Even one of the largest news agencies, Reuters, started its business in Europe with the help of these birds. In 1850, it took 45 pigeons just two hours to transmit news from Aachen in Germany to Brussels.
The general principle that carrier pigeons can communicate in the most difficult conditions was firmly established in the 1870s, and by 1899 Spain, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Romania had set up their own pigeon departments.
Feathered rescuers
Pigeon mushers are something special. They are able to overcome many obstacles and long distances to return home. All these qualities were acquired through breeding and are still being developed, especially in speed and endurance.
The homing pigeon orients itself by observing the sun, the magnetic field and features on the ground, and in its home environment by observing the terrain and prominent natural and man-made features. A pigeon that has flown a certain route before memorises the waypoints by which it orients itself, and is faster later on in the journey.
It never flies in a straight line, but its path moves left-right. It avoids high hills where there is a high risk of predators attacking it. It also avoids bad weather, phenomena such as high voltage, noise and airports. The carrier pigeon only returns home – its route is only one-way.
They were used successfully in the First World War for several reasons. Communications were often disrupted by artillery shelling and sabotage or, at this early stage of development, were still unreliable and slow. In cases where no courier dog was available or conditions did not permit their use, pigeons were the last resort for delivering messages.
The pigeon was not hindered by the rough terrain and was a much smaller target for the enemy. Unfortunately, they were only usable one-way and could not fly in darkness, fog or bad weather. Their advantage was that they ate little and were easy to transport.
They operated from fixed or mobile pigeonholes. The latter were converted horse-drawn buses, and later motorised pigeon-trucks were in use. From there, they were carried to the front in special crates by shoulder-riding soldiers, cyclists, motorcyclists and even dogs in special bags on their backs.
As soon as there was news to report, the commander would write a message in very small handwriting, as the message slips could not weigh more than 10 grammes. The messages were placed in tiny metal sleeves and attached to the pigeon’s tail or under the wing. The pigeon returned to its coop through a small flap that opened inwards and made a sound.
As soon as the handler heard the chime, he removed the message and informed the staff or commanding officer. Pigeon pigeons became so important to the war effort that the British government fined anyone who harmed these feathered animals a hundred pounds or six months’ imprisonment.
During the First and Second World Wars, more than 200,000 pigeons were enlisted in the American army. They carried many life-saving messages, saving the lives of thousands of soldiers in both World Wars. History is replete with stories of animal war heroes who played a vital role and proved to be as reliable as soldiers.
Flight of the Winged Hero
One such story tells of a tenacious and devoted pigeon named Cher Ami, which means ‘dear friend’ in French. In 1918, he helped save the lives of nearly 200 American soldiers who were trapped by enemy troops in France.
On the foggy morning of 2 October 1918, the 77th Division attacked German positions in the Argonne Forest as part of the great Meuse-Argonne offensive. A series of such offensives was intended to deal the final blow to the Germans on the Western Front, and orders were issued not to retreat at any cost.
Under the command of Major Charles White Whittlesey, the men of the Infantry Brigade plunged into battle. During the night they reached their objective – the top of the hill at 198. When they got there, there was complete silence. No sounds of fighting could be heard to the left or right of their position.
As they soon discovered, there were no other Allied troops there to make any sound. The men were completely alone in a hollow between two steep hills known as the Charlevaux Gorge, with the Germans all around them and no retreat possible. Even if they wanted to, they could not retreat. They had no choice but to dig in and wait for help.
The next day, 3 October, the Germans attacked from all sides. All 550 men in the Charlevaux ravine were exposed to mortar fire, enemy snipers and machine guns all day. Major Whittlesey was determined to defend his position, even though he did not have enough ammunition to do so. Without the help of his command, they were doomed to destruction.
There was confusion in the command. Although the commanders knew that Whittlesey was exactly where he was supposed to be, the artillery did not seem to know it. At 2 a.m. on 4 October, Whittlesey and his men received friendly fire. Not only were the Germans showering them with a hail of bullets, but they were also being shelled by their own artillery.
By the second day, more than 300 American soldiers had been killed. There was little hope for the remaining 194 soldiers who were lucky to be alive. A few soldiers were sent as couriers to carry messages about the difficult situation they were in, but the group was so heavily surrounded that every one of them was intercepted.
Caught between two lines of fire, Major Whittlesey desperately tried to get the American artillery bombardment to stop. With his couriers running low and his communications destroyed, he called his pigeon handler, Private Omer Richards, to try and send a message using one of the three carrier pigeons they had with them.
The first two pigeons with SOS messages attached were shot down by the enemy, leaving only one, called Cher Ami. By that time, he had already carried out twelve successful missions to deliver messages in the Verdun area. This time he was the last hope for the men of the lost battalion.
Major Whittlesey and his troops were at the end of their strength and time was running out. They decided to write one last message:
“We are on a road parallel to Route 276.4. We are being directly shelled by our own artillery. For God’s sake, stop it!”
When the bird started to fly, all hope seemed to have disappeared. As soon as Cher Ami left the trench, he hid in a nearby tree, frightened by the hail of missiles. He was so frightened and determined to stay hidden in the tree that Richards had to get out of his trench and climb the tree to chase him away.
Cher Ami took off. The Germans knew what the pigeon meant to the encircled soldiers and bullets immediately rained down on it. As he flew over the battlefield, he was almost shot down and fell to the ground. For the American soldiers, it was a moment of the greatest despair a human being can experience.
But Cher Ami somehow managed to take off again. Despite being badly wounded, he travelled 40 kilometres to complete his mission and save the lives of almost 200 soldiers.
He arrived at the 77th Division’s headquarters dovecote in just 25 minutes. Covered in blood, with a bullet in his torn chest, blinded in one eye and hopping on one leg, the other still hanging by a sinew, he managed to save his lost battalion. Finally, on 7 October, 194 survivors of the battalion were rescued.
Cher Ami became a hero of the 77th Infantry Division. The military doctors tried their best to save his life. When the now one-legged bird recovered sufficiently to travel, he was put on a ship bound for the United States, and General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, escorted him.
A special wooden leg was carved for Cher Ami to replace the severed one. He became a true war hero and made the front page of many American newspapers. He was awarded the Croix de guerre, the French military decoration, for his heroic deed. He died in 1919, nine months after his courageous mission, probably from battle wounds.
Since 1921, the stuffed Cher Ami has been on display at the Smithsonian Museum, the largest museum complex in the world. Together with the mascot of the US Army’s 102nd Infantry Division, Stubby the Boston Terrier, who was awarded the rank of the US Army’s most meritorious war dog, the brave pigeon is on permanent display in the National Museum of American History’s ‘Price of Freedom’ exhibition.
In November 2019, he became one of the first recipients of the Animals in War & Peace Medal for Courage, which was awarded posthumously at a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The first pigeon to be honoured
Pigeons carrying messages during the First World War are said to have had a 95% success rate in reaching their target and bringing news from the front. At the end of the First War, the British had around 20,000 pigeons, trained by some 400 dedicated breeders in the army.
But when the war ended, in an effort to save money, both Britain and America decided to abolish their military carrier pigeon departments. The Germans, the losers, were not so stupid. They realised that the pigeons were useful and kept them throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1934, after Hitler came to power, the pismonosche pigeons came under the official protection of the government. Adolf Hitler was preparing his country for war, and he was aware of the importance of passenger pigeons. The German army command was discussing the possibilities of using them for the future of Germany and all breeders had to register their carrier pigeons with the police.
On the eve of the Second World War, many thought that the days of pigeons as a military method of communication were gone forever, to be replaced by wireless radio.
But not everyone was of that opinion. Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Osman was a British fan of pigeons and firmly believed that they were still needed in modern warfare, as wireless technology was still in its infancy. He made it his mission to put pigeons back to work.
After two years of persuasion and pressure on the War Office, the British Government finally established a national service for carrier pigeons. However, the early days were beset by a number of problems. The army considered pigeons to be a thing of the past and the organisation was under-resourced. Indeed, the vast majority of the country’s senior military officers and leading politicians were in favour of the development and use of radio technology for the transmission of messages, and so they invested a large proportion of the financial resources available for this area of defence. For the Pigeon Squad to survive, the pigeons themselves had to prove their worth.
Pigeons started saving lives early in the war and the Air Ministry in particular was impressed by how useful they were to Bomber Command. The Royal Air Force decreed that each bomber should be accompanied by two pismonoshi pigeons, which would be used as an emergency means of communication in the event of a plane crash.
In cases where radio could not be used, the birds had a great responsibility to fly home and provide assistance. For one of these birds, called Winkie, the moment had come to prove herself.
On 23 February 1942, the crew of a British Bristol Beaufighter was returning home after a mission in Norway. On that mission, the bomber was hit several times, but the crew managed to keep it in the air and head for home. However, somewhere over the North Sea, the aircraft’s engine failed and the pilot was left with no choice but to attempt an emergency landing at sea level more than 200 kilometres from home.
Just before landing, the crew managed to radio for help, and it made it to its home base in Scotland. However, the air base only received the distress call, but no information on the position of the aircraft. A rescue boat was sent, but it was highly unlikely that the crew would be found, as the search area covered 220 000 square kilometres of sea.
The pilot of the plane managed to land safely on the water and the entire crew boarded the lifeboat. Apart from the pilots, Winkie, the carrier pigeon, survived the landing and was the only link between them and the command on the mainland. The crew had only one hope of survival. In extremely difficult conditions, the pigeon would have had to give information to the rescue team that would have greatly reduced the search area.
It was a windy winter night and Winkie fell into the sea. Nevertheless, the next morning just after dawn she somehow managed to fly to her dovecote, where she was found by her caretaker, exhausted and covered in aviation fuel and oil. He immediately informed the rescue headquarters.
The rescue operation had already been called off, but the resourceful handler who was looking after the pigeon loft, judging by the length of time the bird had been flying and the condition it was in, concluded that they were probably looking in the wrong place. The rescue was resumed and, thanks to the remarkable Winkie, the downed crew was found and rescued fifteen minutes after the resumption of the search and rescue operation.
Winkie was the first pigeon to receive the Marie Dickin Medal, an animal decoration equivalent to the Victoria Cross. Successes such as hers have led to pigeons gaining new respect.
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The determination of a little pigeon
But it was the courage and determination of an American pigeon that showed all the advantages of carrier pigeons.
When the USA entered the war, thousands of armoured vehicles, weapons and soldiers arrived in Europe. They brought with them pigeons that were trained to return to European air bases. One of these pigeons, G.I. Joe, is credited with one of the most remarkable rescues of the entire war. With one short flight, he delivered a message that saved the lives of more than a thousand soldiers.
In October 1943, the US Air Force went on a bombing mission in Italy. They were about to bomb the village of Calvi Vecchia, which was then to be taken by British troops. But the British troops beat them to it, because the Germans, terrified of being killed, surrendered without a fight. The British tried to radio the American air base to call off the attack, but all radio communications were cut. Since they could not inform Bomber Command, the Americans could have killed the British soldiers.
The village was just over 30 kilometres from the airbase, and the bombers were still twenty minutes away from taking off. The British had only one hope, to tell the Americans that forces had already taken the village.
That hope was G.I. Joe. For a tiny pigeon to deliver the message in time, it would have had to fly all the way at nearly 100 kilometres per hour, the maximum speed that pigeons can do.
G.I. Joe covered the 32 kilometres in an incredible 20 minutes. The planes were already on the runway, ready to take off, when the attack was called off. His timely message saved the lives of around a thousand British soldiers and many locals.
In 1946, at the Tower of London, G.I. Joe was awarded the Marie Dickin Medal for bravery, which recognises the most distinguished carrier pigeon flight by the US Army in World War II. G.I. Joe was the 29th and first non-British recipient of the medal.
The War of the Birds
Heroic carrier pigeons saved lives. They successfully delivered an astonishing 98% of messages, and even the highest military commanders saw their value.
But then the Germans realised how important pigeons were to the Allies. They decided to use their secret weapon – nature’s pigeon-killing machine, the peregrine falcon.
The full-scale war on birds was on. War doves found themselves in aerial duels with their deadliest natural enemy. The Germans bred falcons as part of an extensive defence system. They targeted Allied pigeons returning to Britain, knowing that they had to somehow stop the British pigeons. They released them from nests in occupied territories in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
As the war wore on, many brave pigeons were killed by German falcons. But the threat of the falcons did not end there. There were wild falcons living along the British coast, which also preyed on pigeons. Drastic measures had to be taken, and they began to be shot off the south coast of Britain so that the pigeons could get through.
But this decision proved disastrous, as German spies infiltrated Britain and used their pigeons to send messages to Germany. With their only line of defence decimated, the British decided to rebuild their falcon colonies. And not only did they breed them, they trained them to resist their natural instinct and return home with their prey. So trained, the falcons brought the pigeons back instead of eating them, and more importantly, they brought back their messages.
Now the pigeons have also attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Today, we are all familiar with MI5 and MI6, but few have heard of MI14, let alone its subdivision MI14(d). It was a little-known branch of British intelligence, the secret pigeon service, which gathered intelligence.
Hundreds of British pigeons were disguised as German pigeons – fitted with fake leg rings and fake German markings on their wings – and sent to infiltrate and destroy the German war machine from within. These were second-rate British pigeons, which they knew did not have the best flying skills. These pigeons were then dropped from a plane over Germany, where they joined the flocks of pigeons there, as they were not strong enough to fly back to Britain.
On examining the pigeons, the Germans found that they had their markings and so took them on missions to their spies in England, from where the pigeons did not return to Germany as the Germans had hoped, but to their original nests around the UK.
In this way, the Allies prevented many messages from reaching Germany, while at the same time finding out what German spies were reporting back to their homeland. So the pigeons became a kind of secret agents. Spies liked to use them because they could not be disturbed like radio waves, they flew silently and their presence did not attract people’s attention.
The first D-Day messenger
After five years of war, the biggest operation of the Western Allies, D-Day, came the Normandy landings. The immense scale of the invasion plan required effective communications on a scale never before imagined.
The Allied objective – to push the Germans out of occupied Europe – required a completely new approach to modern warfare. It involved the largest landing in history, with more than five thousand vessels. They had to cross the unpredictable English Channel, which had already proved fatal for the Spanish Armada, Napoleon and Hitler.
A massive air operation was to bring 13,000 paratroopers behind enemy lines. Operation Overlord began on 6 June 1944 with a night airborne assault before the main landing in the early hours of the morning on the Normandy coast.
The paratroopers were tasked with seizing strategically important transport hubs, destroying German defensive positions and artillery, and defending the rear of the coasts against a German counter-offensive.
The 9th Parachute Battalion was tasked with silencing the main German artillery battery at Merville. The guns were aimed directly at a stretch of coastline called the Sword, where some of the British troops were due to land, so the guns had to be destroyed before they landed.
However, heavy anti-aircraft fire and bad weather caused many of the parachute planes to go astray, dropping the paratroopers in the wrong places. Nevertheless, about 150 paratroopers launched an attack and succeeded in disabling the artillery battery.
But there was a big problem. The battalion’s radio equipment landed 15 kilometres away from the paratroopers and no radio contact could be established with the Arethusa cruiser to inform her of the success of the mission.
Thousands of pigeons also went with the troops on D-Day, as all these complicated plans had to be carried out without the use of the radio, because the Germans were not allowed to know until the last moment where the landing would take place. The agents on the ground had to communicate with the pigeons.
Among them was a pigeon which was later called the Duke of Normandy.
The destruction of the artillery battery at Merville was crucial to the success of the D-Day plans, but it was equally important for the Duke of Normandy to take the news of the destruction of the guns back to Allied HQ. If Pigeon had not got the message across in time, the cruisers of the Arethusa would not have known that they were firing on their comrades. They had a backup plan in place for an artillery attack from Arethusa on the German gun battery if the parachute battalion failed to destroy it.
The Duke’s journey home took almost 27 hours. He fought his way through numerous bullet and bomb explosions, and was hampered by rain and a strong north wind on his return across the English Channel. In 1947, the Duke of Normandy was awarded the Marie Dickin Medal, the first bird to make it home on D-Day with a message.
Heroism that saved 2,000 lives
Operation Overlord was a success and everyone thought that the pigeons’ time to participate in the war was up. They were wrong. At Arnhem in the Netherlands, they faced one last great test.
The Battle of Arnhem was part of the final push Montgomery decided to make in September 1944 to get across the Rhine and end the war by Christmas. In the biggest airborne operation, involving some thirty thousand paratroopers to take eight bridges on the Dutch-German border, everything went horribly wrong.
British tanks and infantry were supposed to meet the paratroopers on the bridges, but on the third day of the operation, near the Dutch town of Arnhem, some two thousand Allied troops found themselves surrounded by a much larger number of German troops. The two SS divisions closing the ring around the British troops had ten times as many soldiers, as well as good supply lines in the rear, while the Allies were already running low on ammunition.
Once again, technology let the Allies down, as they were unable to radio for the reinforcements they desperately needed. The wrong crystals had been inserted into it, and it failed completely. The only way to send the message that they were in trouble was by pigeon.
The bird, who later became known as William of Orange, had a difficult task ahead of him. The pigeon had to fly more than 400 kilometres, half of it over the sea without navigation points.
Despite the slim odds, William of Oran safely reached his pigeon loft in just over four hours, which means he was flying at around 100 kilometres per hour, and delivered a life-saving message. As a result of his successful mission, Allied reinforcements saved more than two thousand of their own soldiers, the largest number of lives saved by a single carrier pigeon.
Despite the long planning and careful preparation by the Allied armies, Arnhem was a fiasco, but it would have been a disaster if the pigeon had failed to break through.
Pigeons after World War II
The greatest plague in human history claimed a huge number of human and animal lives, among them the pigeons of the pismonoses, who paid a heavy blood toll. The pigeons that managed to make it from the front lines, past the hail of bullets, the domesticated falcons and the wild birds that preyed on them, and back to their home pigeon coops were hailed as heroes. The message they carried was usually the difference between life and death.
After the Second World War and until 1953, the then authorities of the SFRY and the Yugoslav People’s Army did not allow their citizens to breed pismonos pigeons because of the danger of espionage, and there was a general moratorium on the breeding of these birds. Ljubljana Castle also once had its own pigeon unit, back in Yugoslavia.
Most armies no longer use carrier pigeons. The US Army stopped using them to carry messages in 1957 due to advances in communication systems. Many carrier pigeons were sold at auction and “heroic” pigeons with outstanding achievements were donated to zoos. By 1950, the British armed forces were paying civilian pigeon fanciers to maintain hundreds of birds for their use.
In Switzerland and Plymouth, England, they are used in some clinics to carry blood samples to the central laboratory, as they have proved to be the fastest transport in the face of inaccessibility and traffic chaos with congestion, despite all modern delivery services.
Pigeons have also been re-introduced in many armies around the world to carry messages and microchips for military purposes. In China, carrier pigeons have become a modern status symbol, and in the military, they have been turned into real cyborgs by inserting microelectrodes into their brains and can even control their flight functions and steer them at will.
Prisoners in Brazil and Colombia have also benefited from the skill of pigeons. There are documented cases of police officers intercepting carrier pigeons carrying drugs, phone cards and even mobile phones. In 2016, it was reported that Islamic State fighters were using birds to carry messages.
The image of the pigeon today
Animals have always served alongside humans in the military. Like humans, they have risked their lives and many of them have died alongside soldiers.
Today, flocks of pigeons circle over almost every town and village. We have become so used to them that we would miss them. The pigeon is an adaptable bird and man’s companion in settlements, where it finds food all year round. Of all the feathered fliers that flutter through the sky, pigeons have the most bipolar social status among humans.
The urban environment is attractive to them because it provides suitable nesting and resting sites, safety from predators, easily accessible food sources and, in winter, temperatures that are several degrees warmer than in uninhabited areas.
The unpopularity of pigeons is a relatively recent phenomenon. Nowadays, most people regard them as pests, feathered or flying rats and carriers of disease. They are often cited as the main culprits of all urban litter, as these feathered creatures, with their disgusting-looking droppings, make life miserable for many a city dweller or passer-by who has an unpleasant greeting dropped on their clothes or head from on high.
Pigeon droppings, which were once used as fertiliser, are also dangerous to human health, as they transmit a number of diseases and are a common trigger for allergic reactions and other infections. Pigeons also carry many mites, bacteria and parasites in their feathers.
On the other hand, they are the most noble and positive symbols of spirit, hope, faith, love, happiness and peace, attracting tourists, carrying messages and competing in beauty contests, sports, message-transmission and even acrobatics.
Pigeons and doves are often depicted in drawings, paintings, statues and other ancient works of art with religious content. They are always associated with the allegorical conveyance of a message, an announcement or good news.
The Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an tell the story of Noah releasing a dove after the cosmic flood and instructing it to find a new earth. The bird soon returned, holding an olive branch in its beak, and told Noah that the water had receded, making room for humans once again.
The dove and the olive branch were used symbolically by the early Christians and later became symbols of secular peace. This was popularised after the Second World War by Pablo Picasso, who painted the Dove of Peace in 1949 for the World Peace Congress in Paris, and in a slightly stylised version it remains to this day a symbol of peace and hope for a better world.
But most importantly, doves saved lives. They played an important but relatively unknown and ignored role in the history of both World Wars, although in the Second World War, thirty-two brave and determined pigeons were awarded medals for all the miles they flew in extremely difficult conditions to deliver a message.
Those who remember their role in both World Wars pay them the respect due to heroes.
Perhaps others will now see the humble dove in a whole new light.
