Pigeon Messages: “Germany and France kapout. England and America very rich. We are lost.”

 

 

U.S. Army Signal Corps pigeons braving the frigid temperatures for a little frolic in the snow in the Futa Pass during the Italian campaign

 

     This is one of the pictures taken by Gordon Hayes that I sent to Elizabeth Macalaster when she contacted me asking for photo suggestions for her book War Pigeons.  The photo is in his book The Pigeons That Went to War.  Hayes’s photos and papers are archived by the Holt-Atherton Collection at the Pacific Library, Stockton, CA.  Thank you to Nicole Grady, curator, for giving permission to send the photos.

     War Pigeons is a robust, impeccably researched book about pigeons in the U.S. military, 1878-1957. 

 

(c) Crown copyright images reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, Kew, UK

Catalog numbers: WO208/3555  #46, #47, #54, #55, #56, #57, #58 

 

Note:  Some pages are missing from one of the messages.