{"id":3122,"date":"2012-12-17T02:35:02","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T08:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3122"},"modified":"2012-12-17T02:35:02","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T08:35:02","slug":"in-the-news-the-pigeon-who-tried-to-save-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3122","title":{"rendered":"In the news: The pigeon who tried to save England"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Garry McCafferty’s whimsically titled\u00a0They had no Choice—Racing Pigeons at War<\/em> (Tempus Publishing: Charleston, SC, and Stroud,Gloucester, UK, 2002) rekindled interest in the homing pigeons of World War II.<\/p>\n

Interested rekindled once again—veritably caught fire—when news sources throughout Britain (see The Guardian video<\/a>, and also the Daly History<\/a> blog) reported that a dead pigeon had been discovered down a chimney in Surrey. Its message, an unintelligible\u00a0AOAKNHVPKD…, had remained undelivered for some seventy years, and remains undecoded to this day.<\/p>\n

During WWII, some pigeons were carried by the RAF in bombers, to be released in case of mishap. (See picture above, and for ‘mishap’, read ‘crash-landing in enemy territory’ or ‘perilous descent into the North Sea’). But our trusty chimney pigeon, it is thought, was charged with bringing messages from France.<\/p>\n

Picture the poor bird, flying through darkness, wind, and rain, across the choppy English Channel. At break of dawn, he spies the chimney-pots of Surrey. He touches down and gratefully flaps his feathers in the warm air rising from the hearth. Then a sudden gust of wind and… swoosh. He plunges helplessly into the sooty hell below.<\/p>\n

Please. No more sad thoughts. Instead of mourning our long-dead friend, I’ll suggest a fitting tribute to this pigeon hero: We should decode his message<\/em>.\u00a0AOAKNHVPKD… It isn’t as simple as pigeon English, but I’ll have a go.<\/p>\n

My first tries<\/span> (guesses, really):<\/p>\n

‘Do not land in Normandy. The Germans are waiting for you.’<\/p>\n

‘From Carrier Pigeon 41.BA.1167: German hawk on my tail since Calais. Shall safeguard message, regardless of cost to self.’<\/p>\n

‘Sources close to enemy high command believe German Fuehrer to wed in New Year. Honeymoon unlikely. No gifts, please.’<\/p>\n

‘Urgent. Stranded in France with only Frenchy stuff to eat. Please send good English food, ASAP. Tins OK.—signed Bunty Carstairs, Flt. Lt.’<\/p>\n

‘Greetings. My name is Percival. I bring a message of peace and goodwill from the pigeons of France.’<\/p>\n

‘This is our last pigeon. Imperative you send more birds.—signed Brown Rabbit, Gaullist Resistance Leader, Banyuls-sur-Mer.’<\/p>\n

‘Ignore request for pigeons from Brown Rabbit. Those Gaullist pigs are eating<\/em> your birds.—signed Grey Rabbit, Communist Resistance Leader, Banyuls-sur-Mer.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garry McCafferty’s whimsically titled\u00a0They had no Choice—Racing Pigeons at War (Tempus Publishing: Charleston, SC, and Stroud,Gloucester, UK, 2002) rekindled interest in the homing pigeons of World War II. Interested rekindled once again—veritably caught fire—when news sources throughout Britain (see The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,27],"tags":[347,346,348],"class_list":["post-3122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-in-the-news","tag-garry-mccafferty","tag-pigeon","tag-they-had-no-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3122"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3267,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions\/3267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}