EARLY JULY, 1916
COURCELETTE, FRANCE

Bullets whizzed over Jake York. The scouting mission had gone wrong. With the other nineteen soldiers of his platoon, he was crouched behind a small hill, trapped by enemy machine gun fire from the other side.

Worse, from miles away, monstrous artillery guns now fired explosive shells at their location. Their own Canadian guns! Nobody at headquarters knew the platoon had been ambushed at that location, and it was only a matter of time before a shell hit them.

At the dreaded whistling sound of another approaching shell, Jake tried to hug the ground. The shell exploded a couple hundred yards behind, throwing up huge gobs of mud that splashed on his helmet.

On his left side, Jake felt an elbow hit his ribs. He looked over at Charlie Austin, a new soldier to the platoon, tall and skinny.

“Look at him blubber,” Charlie said, pointing at another soldier named Mark Lipton. “No wonder you guys call him Princess.”

Mark was close enough to hear Charlie. He was the biggest soldier in the platoon, well over six feet tall and as wide as a barrel. He was barely older than a boy and so shy that he blushed if you gave him a direct look. Tears streamed down his face as he curled his huge body around a small cage, as if that could protect the bird inside from two hundred pounds of explosives.

“Charlie,” Jake said, “I barely know you, but already I’m done with you.”

Jake knew that Mark had been given his nickname back in Canada, at the training camp on a morning that he’d slept late. A sergeant had dumped a bucket of water on Mark and called him Princess in a bellowing voice that had been heard hundreds of yards away, causing laughter among all the soldiers.

But this was not training camp.

It was war. In France. Jake’s platoon, called the Storming Normans, was part of one of the four companies that made up the 36th Battalion. They were on the battle line of trenches with tens of thousands of German soldiers on the other side. No one was laughing anymore.

“He’s a crybaby,” Charlie repeated. “You should be done with him instead.”

“Ignore him,” Jake told Mark. “Everyone else around here knows how much we need your pigeon.”

“Little Abigail,” Mark said. “That’s what I call her. Little Abigail.”

“Something to eat,” Charlie said. “That’s what I’d call it. Tasty little pigeon.”

Mark blinked away fresh tears.

Jake’s young face was gray with lack of sleep and smeared with the inescapable mud. He leaned down to pull at the shoelaces of his boots, but his fingers were greasy with mud and he made little progress.

Jake noticed the soldier on the other side of him was watching with a question on his face. All Jake knew so far was the man’s name, Thomas Northstar, and that he was Cree from Saskatchewan. Thomas had not spoken once since taking a spot beside Jake. Rumor was that—except to say “yes, sir” to Lieutenant Norman—Thomas hadn’t spoken once since joining the platoon.

“Hey,” Jake said to Thomas, “you wearing socks with those moccasins?”

Like many Cree in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Thomas wore moccasins instead of boots. Moccasins were more comfortable and easier for running. Jake was wishing that he had his own pair.

Thomas nodded.

“My boots are too muddy to untie my laces,” Jake explained to Thomas. “Any chance you’d give me those socks for important military reasons?”

Thomas shook his head from side to side. Jake had been joking with his question. No soldier gave up socks.

The dreaded whistling sound came again. Jake ducked his head and held his breath. Whoomp! This one landed a few yards closer than the previous one.

“I’d heard so much about this platoon of Storming Normans,” Charlie said, pulling his head back up. “But if Lieutenant Norman was that good, we wouldn’t be stuck here.”

“That’s why I need my socks,” Jake told Thomas. “If he doesn’t shut up, I’m going to stuff them in his mouth to stop the complaining.”

Thomas broke the silence he’d held since joining the platoon and said to Charlie, “I have not taken off these socks for two weeks. I suggest you listen to Jake or you will not like the taste when I help him feed them to you.”

—

There was another reason that Mark Lipton was called Princess by his friends. When it came to animals, he had the gentlest touch. He fought tears at the sight of any animal in pain. Any other man might have been teased for it, but Lipton’s pain was so visible that to the other soldiers it seemed to express all of the sorrows they had to keep bottled up in these horrible times.

Because of that gentleness, Mark had been given the job of caring for the pigeons. The cage he protected was strung with shoulder straps and held only one pigeon.

There had been four in the cage a day earlier. One at a time, a couple of hours apart, each of the other three had been released. Each had failed to make it past patrolling falcons and German gunners. Little Abigail was Mark’s favorite and the only one that remained.

Others said that a pigeon did not recognize men the way that a dog might, and the huge man never disagreed because he was always too shy to argue with anyone. But Mark knew better. He knew that Little Abigail loved eating seed directly from his hand when he reached into the cage, and he knew that Little Abigail loved it when he stroked her feathers at night to calm her before putting a blanket over the cage.

—

Lieutenant Norman crawled toward them through a haze of smoke from the explosions, nodding with a grim tightness of his mouth. He was a man of medium build, but something in the intensity of his dark eyes made him seem a lot larger.

“It’s time,” Lieutenant Norman told Mark. “Last chance.”

Mark understood. He’d already watched three not make it, and his tears were for the danger that this one faced. Little Abigail.

Mark fumbled with the clasps to the small door of the wire cage. Mark reached inside to wrap his fingers around the bird, and Little Abigail did not flinch. He felt the softness of the bird’s downy breast feathers and the rapid firing of the bird’s heart against her ribs.

Mark pulled Little Abigail out of the cage. They both waited for their orders. Because a good soldier—no matter what size—would do what was needed.

—

Little Abigail was a beautiful white bird with slate gray markings on her breast and wings. She was born and bred with an ability to find her way home, no matter where she was released.

Outside the cage, to Little Abigail, the hands that held her were huge. But she did not feel fear, because the gentleness of those giant hands was always a comfort to her, giving her a sense of protection. She did not struggle, then, as the large hands cradled her body, and she did not pull her left leg away from the fingers of the other man who carefully tied the tiny tube to the delicate bone.

She waited, because she knew that soon she would be flung into the freedom of flight.

A pigeon cannot understand human words, but it does understand sound and emotion.

“Fly fast and brave,” said the man that others called Princess. He brushed his face against the top of her head and opened his hands.

Little Abigail tucked her legs into her belly and burst upward with a flash of wings.

Ahead were falcons that could dive at more than a hundred miles an hour faster than Little Abigail’s fastest speed.

But the real danger was in her first moments of flight.

Little Abigail needed to gain height and circle a few times to find her way. When she was oriented, she adjusted her wing tips to make a diving turn and, by nothing more than sheer good fortune, ducked beneath the first bullet fired at her. The shot was so close that a slight puff of feathers blew away in the air currents.

Unfortunately, the next bullet hit more than outer feathers, and Little Abigail tumbled from the sky.

Jake saw her disappear in a small clump of land between the enemy soldiers and the trapped platoon.

—

That’s it then, Lieutenant John Norman thought. We are finished.

Without realizing he had done it, the lieutenant reached inside his uniform and felt the edges of the photograph of his young son. He didn’t need to pull it out to see his son’s face. Lieutenant Norman had every feature memorized. With his fingers on the photograph, he allowed himself to imagine that he was stepping off a train back home, and that his son was running toward him, arms outstretched.

Lieutenant Norman told himself he would keep this image in his mind for as long as possible. He would fight to the end, but without a message reaching the commanding officers, he would not be stepping off a train in Canada to hold his son.

“Sir,” Mark said. “Look.”

Mark had not stopped watching the small clump of land where his favorite pigeon had fallen. He’d believed in Little Abigail and refused to give up on her.

Somehow Little Abigail had managed to fight gravity and pull herself into the gray air. Like an erratic butterfly, she fluttered a few feet from the ground, then ten feet.

It tore at Princess to see the awkwardness of Little Abigail’s movements. She was no longer sleek and fast; she was clumsy and heavy. But she had managed to fall out of range of German bullets and was safe from more gunfire.

She climbed. And climbed. Little Abigail was determined to conquer the gravity that wanted to pull her down.

Then, regaining strength and resolution, Little Abigail found her direction and pushed hard toward her home.

—

“Sir! Sir!”

An hour later and dozens of miles away, a woman in a Canadian nurse’s uniform called for the nearest officer. The bell had just clanged, alerting her to the arrival of a pigeon in the roost.

Her name was Elizabeth Reed, and she had come from Toronto to join the war effort. She was tall with reddish hair, and she loved reading at nights, even though too often it was by candlelight because the electricity was out.

She served at a nearby hospital, but she was visiting the pigeon loft because she volunteered in her spare time to feed the birds and clean the cages. She had been standing near the cage where Little Abigail had been born five months earlier, when, with no warning, Little Abigail had come crashing into the loft with a feeble flapping of wings.

Elizabeth had watched in disbelief as Little Abigail tried to find a perch, then toppled onto the wires of the cage floor. The bird was no longer beautiful white, but red with blood from a torn breast, exhausted to the point of death.

Little Abigail’s will to return home was all that had kept her alive, and now that she’d arrived, she was on the verge of succumbing to her wounds.

Unconscious, she was barely alive.

Elizabeth lifted Little Abigail as softly as possible. Her first duty was the message in the tube. Little Abigail had given every ounce of her effort to deliver the message and those efforts would not be wasted.

Elizabeth scanned the message. “It’s the location of a platoon from the 36th Battalion. Trapped in the German sector. Under enemy fire and facing our own shells. They need help!”

The officer nodded, then examined the bird. One bullet had torn the bird’s breast, another bullet had grazed her eye socket, and a third had smashed and broken a leg.

It was incredible that Little Abigail had managed to fly the distance.

“A shame,” the officer said. “It looks like she won’t make it.”

He tapped the message and spoke again. “But thanks to her, the soldiers might.”

—

Three weeks later, at the end of her shift at the hospital, Elizabeth Reed walked out to face a sunny afternoon that was warm even for early August. A large man in a Canadian uniform approached her.

He was fumbling with his cap in his hands, twisting it with obvious nervousness, so she gave him a smile for encouragement. This was a soldier on leave. The men would spend two weeks in the trenches, and then be given a full week away from the fighting.

Elizabeth knew how important leave was for the soldiers. They could shower and get warm, eat a full meal and sleep without worrying about rats crawling into their blankets or shells dropping from the dark sky.

Her smile wasn’t enough to set him at ease. He kept looking at his shoes as he twisted his hat.

“Hello,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t seen you before. Are you looking for a friend in the hospital?”

For such a huge man, he was extremely quiet.

“Yes,” he said, still staring at the ground. “Only…”

“Only?”

“It’s one of the birds, you see.” He finally lifted his eyes to hers. “And I’ve been told you’re the one who made sure she’s alive.”

That’s when Elizabeth understood.

“Little Abigail!” Elizabeth said.

The huge man grinned. “Yes!”

He seemed to lose his shyness as he spoke. “You might not understand. We all thought we were goners. Then, like magic, the shells stopped getting closer. And when…”

He stopped. Not from shyness, this time, but from the gratitude that was overwhelming him.

“Yes?” she said.

“And when we saw another Canadian platoon, it was like a miracle. They’d fought their way past the enemy to rescue us. That’s when I knew that, somehow, Little Abigail had made it here. So I asked. They said it was you who made a surgeon put her on the operating table.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Indeed. Would you like to see her?”

“Yes!” The huge man seemed transformed into a little boy.

“My name is Elizabeth,” she said.

“I’m Mark,” he answered.

“Come with me,” she said.

As he followed her, Elizabeth kept speaking.

“By the way,” Elizabeth said. “Have you heard the other news about Little Abigail?”

“No.” Suddenly he was nervous again.

“Don’t worry,” she said. They had reached the bird coop, and sounds of cooing pigeons filled the air. “Look for yourself.”

She pointed at a medal hanging from the cage. “It’s wonderful news. Everyone knows how plucky she was and how many lives she saved. She’s a real war hero. When the French president heard about her, he decided she deserved one of France’s great honors—the Croix de Guerre.”

The Cross of War! Mark felt like his face was splitting from the huge grin that hit him. But he was more concerned about seeing Abigail than admiring the medal.

There she was in the corner, head tilted and a gleam in her eyes.

“I’d like to hold her,” Mark said. “Would that be all right?”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said.

Mark reached into the cage. Abigail allowed his big hands to fold around her. He pulled her out. That’s when he noticed that someone had carved her a wooden leg to replace the one that had been shattered by a bullet.

He didn’t even care that his eyes filled with tears and he was crying in front of a woman he’d just met.

On October 4, 1918, US Army Major Charles Whittlesey and two hundred soldiers were trapped in a small depression on a hillside. This was their second day of battle, and they were in a desperate situation. Incoming fire from their own artillery, meant to help protect them, was instead landing closer and closer because their precise position was unknown.

Major Whittlesey had sent out a number of pigeons over the span of the battle, and his final bird was named Cher Ami, which means “dear friend” in French. Cher Ami had been on the front line for several months and had already flown twelve missions.

When Cher Ami was released, enemy gunners were waiting and fired such a volley that three bullets struck the bird. One bullet blinded Cher Ami. A second bullet tore through his chest. And a third bullet shattered his leg.

Cher Ami fluttered to the ground. Then, to the soldiers’ disbelief and joy, Cher Ami struggled back into the air and flew forty kilometers (25 mi.) to deliver the message, saving the trapped soldiers.

Medics from the 77th Infantry Division saved Cher Ami’s life but could not save his shattered leg, so they carved him a wooden leg as a replacement. French soldiers heard of the brave bird and awarded Cher Ami one of the highest medals of honor in the French army.

Later, Cher Ami was sent to the United States and received a hero’s welcome. When Cher Ami died about a year later, his body was preserved and put on display at the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington, D.C.

THE CARRIER PIGEON IN WAR

With the ability to deliver messages at speeds of up to one hundred kilometers (62 mi.) an hour, carrier pigeons were a vital part of World War One communications. Once released, the pigeons had to avoid enemy fire and the enemy’s trained falcons. Over 100,000 pigeons were used during the war, and they had an astounding success rate of 95 percent.

The pigeons were kept in mobile lofts behind the front line, drawn either by horses or automobiles, then taken into the trenches as necessary. Pigeons delivered messages from ship to ship as well, and were even sent from airplanes. They were also released with messages when sailors or pilots faced shipwrecks or crashes. One pigeon, launched from a ship wrecked out at sea, managed to deliver a message 305 kilometers (190 mi.).

The importance of the pigeons in the war was such that nearly thirty years later, despite many advances in technology, there were double the number of pigeon messengers in World War Two.

COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES IN WORLD WAR ONE

Communications were crucial to coordinating the efforts of tens of thousands of soldiers. Messages had to be sent and received to warn of ambushes and enemy presence, to shift soldiers to new locations during battle and to ensure that soldiers knew what orders to follow.

Traditionally, armies communicated with flag signals and messengers on foot or horseback, but telephone and telegraph had been introduced. These were not new technologies. Telephone was preferred, as it offered immediate two-way communication. But this kind of communication meant having to lay hundreds of kilometers of wire throughout the trenches, usually buried a minimum of thirty centimeters (12 in.). Also, the enemy was capable of listening to conversations; until the introduction of insulated lines, all it took was adding a wire on the ground nearby to intercept messages.

Laying wire also came at a tremendous cost of lives. During major offensive operations, engineers scrambled to lay wire or replace wire destroyed by shelling, putting themselves in the line of fire. For the British Royal Engineers Signal Service, as an example, the casualty rates were sometimes as high as 50 percent.

Worse, when soldiers had advanced or retreated, they moved away from the wires, basically cutting off their communication.

As the war went on, the armies on both sides began to try wireless units. Although wireless, they weren’t exactly portable. In 1916, a wireless set for an aircraft weighed over 136 kilograms (300 lb.) and required an antenna dangling from the airplane that was 137 meters (450 ft.) long.

In the trenches, an operator carrying a wireless set needed the assistance of two helpers, each carrying antenna wires. One would walk fifteen meters (50 ft.) in front and the other the same distance behind.

It is no wonder then that so many lives depended on animal messengers, including dogs and carrier pigeons, for reliable and fast delivery of messages.

UNDERSTANDING HOW CARRIER PIGEONS DELIVER MESSAGES

Sending a message via carrier pigeon, often called “Pigeon Post,” usually consists of writing a message on thin, light paper that is then rolled into a small tube and attached to the bird’s leg.

However, some pigeons are trained to carry up to seventy-five grams (2.5 oz.) on their backs. In England and France as recently as the 1980s, pigeons were used to transport medical samples between hospitals for the simple reason that it was much faster and more efficient for a bird to fly direct than sending human couriers in cars or on bikes on crowded roads.

Once in the air, the pigeon orients itself and travels the shortest route possible to its home base. Some researchers believe the birds rely on the Earth’s magnetic field to form a mental map and compass. The researchers have learned that the top of the pigeon’s beak has a large amount of iron particles, and they believe that these particles align themselves to face the north, no differently than compasses used by humans.

Other researchers, however, think that pigeons use sound frequencies below what humans can sense to understand location. They believe that the length of sound waves at this level explains why a pigeon must circle a few times before leaving: the pigeon has to mentally map the sound. Researchers have also been able to use these sound waves to disrupt or even redirect a pigeon’s navigation.

Regardless of how pigeons are able to find their way home, there is no doubt that those who merely see them as urban pests are missing what makes them so fascinating.