These days, French military pigeon number 193-529 is no longer needed to carry tiny messages during wartime communication blackouts. However, the racing bird serves as a reminder of the brave service of its predecessors in World Wars I and II, and the 1870 siege of Paris.
Inside Europe’s last military pigeon loft, Sergeant Sylvain cradled 193-529, an alert feathered athlete with an iridescent green neck.
“He’s a carrier pigeon, like the ones who served in World Wars I and II,” said Sylvain, withholding his surname for security purposes.
Photo: AFP
“But today he races,” added the member of the armed forces, whose grandfather was also a pigeon fancier.
In Mont Valerien outside Paris, Sylvain flits between dovecotes, tending to some 200 pigeons — cleaning their shelters and making sure they have enough to eat.
These days, they only use their navigating skills when they are released during competitions, military ceremonies or demonstrations for visitors, he said.
Photo: AFP
Humans have been using homing pigeons since antiquity, but the French military started using them as a communication tool during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 after the Prussians besieged Paris. In October that year, the interior minister boarded a hot-air balloon to flee the French capital.
About a month later, the French military had elaborated a messenger pigeon plan to communicate with people still in the city, according to a French government account.
Patriotic Parisians donated more than 300 pigeons to the war effort, which were loaded into the wicker baskets of hot-air balloons and transported southward to the city of Tours.
Upon arrival they were fitted with small tubes containing 3 to 4cm of microfilm on which minute messages had been inscribed, called “pigeongrams.”
They were then released as close to the capital as possible so they could carry them back inside.
Only about 50 pigeons made it.
Parisians who found the pigeons then placed the microfilm between sheets of glass and, using a magic lantern — an early type of image projector — projected it onto a large screen to read it.
They transcribed the contents and delivered the message to its intended recipient.
During the two world wars, pigeons were used again when “modern means of communication reached their limits,” such as “bombardments ripping down telephone lines,” Sylvain said.
During World War II, a French pigeon helped alert Allies that six German U-boats were undergoing maintenance in the French port of Bordeaux, leading to aerial raids that destroyed four of them, Sylvain said.
The pigeon, nicknamed “Maquisard” like some members of the French Resistance, received an award.
A British pigeon, too, made headlines.
Gustav, a homing pigeon in the British Royal Air Force, traveled 240km back across the Channel to break the first news of the D-Day landings in June 1944, according to the Imperial War Museum.
He carried a message from a war correspondent, and was also awarded a medal.
The French military last relied on homing pigeons during the war in Algeria from 1954 to 1962 that led to the North African country’s independence from France.
In 1961, the French armed forces ended the messenger pigeon program.
Sylvain said the military continued to train the birds for a while, fearing an electromagnetic attack would bring down communications.
However, there is no longer such a risk, he said, with the military having set up specialized shields to protect its communications from any such attack.
However, should the need for messenger pigeons however return, Sylvain said he is ready.
“I have all the training manuals from World War I right up to 1961,” he said. “It worked a century ago, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t again today.”
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Cannabis-based medicines have shown little evidence of effectiveness for treating most mental health and substance-use disorders, according to a large review of past studies published in a major medical journal on Monday. Medical use of cannabinoids has been expanding, including in the US, Canada and Australia, where many patients report using cannabis products to manage conditions such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. Researchers reviewed data from 54 randomized clinical trials conducted between 1980 and May last year involving 2,477 participants for their analysis published in The Lancet. The studies assessed cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders or substance-use
NATIONWIDE BLACKOUT: US President Donald Trump cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, strangling the Caribbean island’s already antiquated grid Cuba’s national electric grid collapsed on Monday, the nation’s grid operator said, leaving about 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the already obsolete generation system. Grid operator UNE on social media said that it is investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that this weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run nation. Officials ruled out a major power plant failure, but had still not pinpointed the root cause of the grid collapse, suggesting a problem with transmission. Officials said that
‘HEALTH ISSUE’: More than 250 women are hospitalized every day due to complications from unsafe abortions, and about three die, a study showed Jane had been bleeding heavily for days before finally seeking help, not from a hospital, but from the man who sold her the pills meant to end her six-week pregnancy. Abortions are strictly outlawed in the mainly Catholic Philippines, forcing women to turn to a patchwork of providers operating in the online shadows. While rare in practice, Philippine law allows for prison terms of up to six years for abortion patients and providers, leaving thousands of Filipinas to search for solutions in online forums where unlicensed sellers promote abortifacients. “It was very painful, as if my abdomen was being twisted,” said Jane, whose
RSS