Historical Note

World War I has always saddened and fascinated me with its colossal scale and the destruction it wrought, and the way it opened the door to the subsequent horrors of the twentieth century. But my inspiration for this book came from an unexpected place.

I teach a class at DePaul University called “Drift and Dream: Writer as Urban Walker.” Back in 2013, one of the students in that workshop, Brian Micic, turned in a poem that contained an almost throwaway line about pigeons: “This was no Cher Ami story. (Look it up!)” I appreciated the good-natured ribbing—I am forever reminding my students to look things up—so look it up I did.

What I found astonished me—despite my years of reading books and watching films about the Great War, I had never heard of this bird, nor had I heard anything at all about the Lost Battalion, the nickname of the group of American soldiers she helped to save from a friendly fire incident in France’s Meuse-Argonne Forest in October of 1918. I also knew nothing whatsoever of that group of men’s commander, Charles Whittlesey, a person who gave his all not only in that ordeal but also in his civilian life upon returning to the States.

The size of their bravery in life and the depth of their forgottenness in death made me realize that I needed to tell their stories. I went to see Cher Ami in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and was stunned by how small and smart she looked, even stuffed, and I kept her picture as the wallpaper on my computer as I wrote.

Cher Ami really was one of the many highly decorated homing pigeons to be deployed by the United States Armed Forces during World War I, thanks to these birds’ reliability and accuracy in relaying information from the front lines to the rear. She really did receive grievous wounds while carrying the message that saved Charles Whittlesey’s Lost Battalion. And she really did manage to live on for a few months after that, stitched up by army medics and using a tiny wooden leg. Taxidermied after her death in honor of her high level of service, her body really does remain on exhibit at the Smithsonian in their “Price of Freedom” exhibit.

Charles Whittlesey, the courageous and compassionate commanding officer of the Lost Battalion, really did receive the Medal of Honor for his leadership during that harrowing incident. Sadly, upon his return to the States, he really was unable to adjust to the demands of serving as a high-profile war hero and took his own life by leaping into the Atlantic from an ocean liner in 1921. His body was never recovered.

To be clear, this is a work of fiction and not a biography of either Cher Ami or Charles Whittlesey. Though largely based on newspaper reports and other published accounts, the specific circumstances of the novel are invented and the attitudes and opinions expressed by both pigeon and soldier are entirely imagined.

That said, I encourage everyone interested to learn more about this once famous and now largely unsung episode in American history, perhaps by visiting the Smithsonian in DC and the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, and by reading the following books, which were indispensable in the writing of this one:

Cher Ami: The Story of a Carrier Pigeon by Marion Benedict Cothren (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1934)

Finding the Lost Battalion: Beyond the Rumors, Myths and Legends of America’s Famous WW1 Epic by Robert Laplander (Waterford, WI: Lulu Press, 2006)

Five Days in October: The Lost Battalion of World War I by Robert H. Ferrell (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005)

History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion by Lee Charles McCollum (Chicago: Buckley Publishing Company, 1919)

History of the 308th Infantry: 1917–1919 by Louis Wardlaw Miles (New York: G.B. Putnam’s Sons, 1927)

The Lost Battalion: A Private’s Story by John W. Nell (San Antonio, TX: Historical Publishing Network, 2001)

Last but not least, unrelated to World War I, but very much related to Cher Ami, I recommend The Pigeon by Wendell Mitchell Levi, published by the R. L. Bryan Company in 1941, for being a marvelous compendium of pigeons and all the remarkable things that they—like humans—can sometimes be capable of.