A Pigeon That Does Not Talk

Before cell phones and fax machines, and before telephone lines were strung like cat's cradles from pole to pole around the world, there were carrier pigeons carrying secret messages during times of war.

Not all of those pigeons found their way home. Some fell into the sea, dead from exhaustion, or were sucked into the vortex by storms. Some were lost to hawk predation, and some were shot out of the sky by buillet or shrapnel. Some simply got lost and never returned to their coop. And at least one ended up inside a chimney in Bletchingley, Surrey. The Telegraph reports:

[A] carrier pigeon dispatched by the invasion force to relay secret messages back across the Channel never made it home to its base.

Instead the bird got stuck in a chimney only to be discovered 70 years later, it's secret communique still attached to its skeleton in a red capsule.

The message is so secret that it is written in code long since forgotten by the security services.

Now the Government Communications Headquarter (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, Glos, is hoping to decipher the note in a bid to unravel the mystery....

... Historians believe the bird was almost certainly dispatched from Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944 - During the D-Day invasions.

Due to Winston Churchill's radio blackout, homing pigeons were taken on the D-Day invasion and released by Allied Forces to inform military Generals back on English soil how the operation was going....

... It is thought that the bird was destined for the top secret Bletchley Park, which was just 80 miles from Mr Martin's home.

The message was sent to XO2 at 16:45 and contained 27 codes, each made up of five letters or numbers.

The destination X02 was believed to be Bomber Command, while the sender's signature at the bottom of the message read Serjeant W Stot.

Experts said the spelling of Serjeant was significant, because the RAF used J, while the Army used G.

During the war, Codebreakers worked there round the clock in top secret - deciphering Nazi codes including Enigma.

It was also home to a classified MI6 pigeon loft, manned by trainer Charles Skevington.

Hat tip to Jon Lane and Jemima Harrison for sending this on to me! I love this nexus: wildlife, war, animal training, history, and a little bit of the macabre mixed with the soil of spycraft. Perfect!
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