HISTORY | BIRDS
How One Pigeon Saved 200 People
Her body was preserved, and she was placed on display at the Smithsonian Museum, where she remains to this day.
Before we had satellites and smart phones we had Pigeons. For hundreds of years our swiftest form of communication was tying a note to a Pigeon’s leg, throwing it into the sky and hoping to hell it didn’t fall foul of a falcon.
You might know these aptly winged mercurial messengers as Homing Pigeons, so named because their innate ability to find their way home. But they are no different, genetically speaking, to any other city-dwelling, statue-pooping, flying rat you might find on an urban sidewalk. They’re just selectively bred Rock Doves (Columba livia domestica).
So on the one hand they’re rather ordinary. But on the other hand they’re quite extraordinary. A top Homing Pigeon can find its roost from over a 1,800 Km (1,100 miles) away, and they can travel at a maximum speed of 160 Km/h (100 miles per hour). It’s long been speculated that they can sense the Earth’s magnetic field, and they use this as a guide to find their way around. Because of their unfailing navigational skills, they were often used during war to send important messages from the front back to headquarters.
Even into World War Two, soldiers relied on Pigeons, to get messages out of places when all other lines of communication failed. Pilots used to fly with Pigeons so in case they were shot down in awkward places they’d have a way to get an SOS out.
And that brings us to the Western Front, during the dying months of World War One where the story of Cher Ami begins.
Cher Ami was a humble Homing Pigeon born in April 1918. In October of that year, she and two other Pigeons were assigned to the US 77th Division, under the command of one Major Charles Whittlesey.
Major Whittlesey had been ordered to launch an attack on the Germans held up in the Argonne Forest, situated in north eastern France. The plan was for his unit to advance with the support of one French division on their left flank and two American divisions on their right. The attack started well, with the 77th making significant headway, but unbeknown to Whittlesey, the support on both his left and right flank had been halted. They pushed on, not knowing they were alone, and quickly found themselves behind enemy lines and surrounded on all sides. They had no food, no ammunition, and to make matters worse they began taking friendly fire from their own artillery.
Pinned down, with no way to reach headquarters, Charles took his first Pigeon and scribbled a hurried note, begging them to stop the barrage. He released the Pigeon, but German sharp shooters were watching and shot it from the sky. The second Pigeon met the same fate.
Charles then took Cher Ami and wrote: ‘We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heavens sake stop it.’
He released her, only to watch her get shot from the sky like the others. All hope seemed lost, but then somehow Cher Ami rose from the undergrowth and took off back to base, covering the 40Km in just 25 minutes. That’s a speed of around 96Km/h (60 miles/h).
Cher Ami had been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye and had one foot hanging from a single tendon, but she delivered her message, saving the lives of 194 soldiers. Seeing that she was in a desperate state, medics were brought in to work on her, and they managed to save her life. In time, they even fashioned her a tiny peg leg.
For her service Cher Ami was awarded the Croix de Guerre, a French decoration for valour. Once stable she was shipped back the United States where she was greeted as a national hero. Sadly, her wounds were too servere and she eventually died on 13 June 1919.
Her body was preserved, and she was placed on display at the Smithsonian Museum, where she remains to this day.
As a final fun fact, people familiar with French may have noticed that Cher Ami is the masculine form of the phrase, ‘dear friend’. While alive, Cher Ami was thought to have been a male, but after she died the taxidermist discovered she had been a lady Pigeon all along.
She is the greatest hero in all Pigeondom, and today we salute her.
