All Creatures Great and Small

By Michael Mountain, May 24, 2011

Pigeons, the Winged Messengers of War

Men of the 21st Signal Loft release messenger pigeons in World War II

It was early 1944 in Italy, and the Allies were fighting a long and fierce battle for the strategic heights of Monte Cassino, southeast of Rome.

British troops had been pinned down for nine days by withering German fire, and there seemed to be no way through to rescue them. Still, three soldiers from HQ set out to reach their comrades. Each of them took a different route and carried a homing pigeon. And each scribbled a short message about the routes they had taken and sent them back to HQ by pigeon. Allied guns were then able to open fire and clear an escape route, and the trapped soldiers slipped away to safety.

With their remarkable homing abilities, pigeons have been a major means of communication in wars through the centuries. In 1150 BCE, the Sultan of Baghdad strapped papyrus sheets to the legs of birds to carry messages back and forth.

Pigeons related the news of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul and of Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.

The pigeons at Waterloo were not all there for military purposes. In France, the Rothschild banking family knew that the outcome of the battle would affect money markets in Europe and even in America. A victory for Wellington would mean that British stock markets and debt were undervalued while a victory for Napoleon would spell disaster in London.

The Rothschilds’ pigeons were trained for speed, and ensured that Nathan Rothschild knew the news of Napoleon’s defeat a full day before the British government heard the outcome. During that day, Rothschild worked the financial markets at discounted rates before the world caught up and markets surged, garnering the family’s bank an unnamed but huge fortune.

Pigeons were faster and could travel much longer distances than dogs, the other message carriers. The most famous of all war pigeons was Cher Ami, who flew missions for the Americans in France during World War I. In her last flight, she was wounded in the leg and breast, but she delivered her message, still hanging from the ligament of the leg that had been shot off.