Interesting my grandfather was in the US Army Signal Corps used carrier pigeons very often of course other times he got to walk around with a case handcuffed to his wrist.He preferred the carrier pigeons to be the messenger.He became an NCO fairly quickly and got billeted with an older British couple whose son had been KIA during the Battle of Britain not sure what their name was but I could look it up he wrote very detailed letters to my grandmother.The son had been listed as MIA at first but the parents knew that he was dead later in the war the RAF changed his status to KIA but the parents had already accepted his fate.
The war was not too bad for him he spent most of his time in England except for some very exciting weeks right after D-Day.He told me that the both the Allies and the Germans hand trained falcons whose job it was to kill enemy carrier pigeons not sure that they could tell allied carrier pigeons from Axis though I guess that they would keep the falcons near the lines and let them go when they saw a bird fly from German lines.I think a common counter to this was to release several carrier pigeons at the same time some with no message.
|