January 11, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, experience the gripping drama of the front lines as a valiant pigeon becomes the last hope to stop a brutal friendly-fire barrage! Historian Frank Blazich, from the National Museum of American History, shares the story of the use of homing pigeons during WWI.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
we have a history story from Frank blaze, a curator
at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.
During World War One, Europe began to look to homing
pigeons as a means of communication. Trench warfare was no
place for radio or wired lines that were easily tapped
(00:34):
or damaged, and so they turned to pigeons. Here's Frank
Blazich with a story.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Why pigeons of all things. Well, ancient history is a
bit sketchy and about how accurate it is. We do
know that in the nineteenth century pigeons be used to
reliably send small messages from essentially point A to point B.
This was most notable in the Siege of Paris and
the Franco Prussian War from eighteen seventy to seventy one,
(01:13):
where the French were able to in some cases move
pigeons out of Paris by balloon, and then the pigeons
could transmit. They would actually carry essentially early microfilmed messages
from outside Paris back into Paris and vice versa, and
so the French uses to get around the German siege
with some success. After the siege was over. A lot
(01:39):
of the world's militaries took note of this and said, hmm,
we might want to develop this capability, if you will,
for our uses. And so you see a number of
governments in europegin to develop homing pigeon effort offices, programs
and so forth within their militaries. The United States doesn't,
We begin to kind of play around with pigeons fermenting
(02:00):
at best, but we long story short, we just don't
really develop the capability until in nineteen seventeen, the German
government informs Wilson that they're going to engage in unrestricted
submarine warfare. The Germans finally say, one of the only
ways that we're going to begin to really knock Britain
out of the war or severely curtail their war effort
(02:22):
on the Western Front is to sink the merchant ships
that are bringing food and supplies and other aid to
the British no miles. And so they'll unleash their U
boats to do unrestricted warfare, and President Wilson will go
to Congress request the declaration of war, which Congress grants.
(02:44):
In the United States centers the war in April sixth
nineteen seventeen. We're bright eyed and bushy tailed, so to speak,
in entering the war. But again we don't have any pigeons.
When the first American troops officers will begin to head
overseas to England in France in Junion of nineteen seventeen,
they have this massive learning curve to get caught up
(03:06):
with the conflict itself and the various technologies that the
combatants have been engaged in over the previous few years.
A good example of this when the first American troops
will actually arrive in France, they don't have helmets. We
don't have what we think of today something very commonplace.
We don't actually have steel helmets in use for our soldiers.
(03:28):
They come ashore wearing felt campaign hats, something you'd see
in the American West. The US Navy, the first time
we send ships overseas in May nineteen seventeen, they had
never seen a depth charge before, which had only recently
been developed to basically combat German U boats. This is
all completely new to the US military, so the learning
curve is quite steep, and that includes pigeons. And when
(03:53):
the US Armies signal officers, particularly Colonel Edgar A. Russell,
the chief signal officer to General John J. Pershing, commanding
the American Expeditionary Forces. When he begins to meet with
his counterparts in the British and French armies, they basically say,
you need to get pigeons. These work, they're proven, and
(04:14):
in this kind of fighting in the trenches, with the
risk of your communications being cut by artillery or other means,
pigeons are really the best option in a pinch to
get your information from may to be so. In July
of nineteen seventeen, the call is sent from Russell to
Major General Georgia Squire, and he's the Chief Signal officer
(04:36):
of the entire United States Army, and he basically says,
we need pigeons, right, we need to set up this service.
And General Pershing will then request two officers as well
as I think about a dozen enlisted men to come
over to France and set up a pigeon service for
the US Army. We have about twenty five hundred birds
(04:57):
roughly when we start the English. The British Expeditionary Force
they have had they've been using pigeons for years now,
and in May of nineteen eighteen they will actually give
the United States Army six hundred young pigeons. So that's
how the bird that we now know is Charmy will
(05:17):
first come into the US Army on May twentieth, nineteen eighteen,
arguably a conscripted so to speak, or selected to join
the United States Army. So in terms of the training
of the pigeons, the pigeons are usually about four to
six weeks old, and at that point they're moved into
what are called mobile lofts. And the best way to
(05:40):
describe I like to refer to the mobile loft as
a pigeon RV. It's basically a large wooden kind of
like box car that's put on a truck truck frame
which has leaf spring suspension so forth, so you can
move it. You can actually move. The loft with the
movement of the armies. Is really the home. That is
(06:02):
where the birds are going to eat, that's where they're
going to sleep in some cases, that's where they're going
to find their mate and breed, and that is what
they're going to return to at all points in time.
And so once the birds are in the loft, you're
training the bird that if it wants to eat, it
has to come home to the loft if it wants
to return to its mate, be it a male or female.
(06:22):
I should pause and say, pigeons mate for life, So
the birds want to return to their partner. In whatever case,
the birds have this desire understandably to get back home.
Share me in July of nineteen eighteen is assigned to
Mobile Loft number eleven. That bird, as well as Loft
(06:45):
number eleven, will find itself in September of nineteen eighteen
preparing for the launch of the meuse Argone offensive. And
this is still the bloodiest operation in American military history,
and we had something like five hundred and fifty nine
Americans killed in action every single day for forty seven
I think it's forty seven consecutive days. So it's an
(07:08):
incredibly costly, costly offensive, but it's really the culmination of
America's involvement in World War One on the battlefield, and
pigeons will absolutely play a major part of this. These
pigeons for Mobile Loft number eleven as well Mobile Loff
(07:30):
number nine will support soldiers of the seventy seventh Infantry
Division and now they're going to be fighting through the
Argonne Forest. There is the first battalion of the three
hundred eighth Infantry Regiment of the seventy seventh Division is
commanded by a Major Charles W. Whittlesey, and Whittlesy is
going to receive orders to essentially advance to what is
(07:53):
known as the Levergette Moulone de Charlevo Binnerville Road through
the forest, and he's told that once he reaches the road,
he's to halt and wait for reinforcement. Whittlesy gets to
the road, he then basically sends a message back, I'm here.
The problem here is Whittlesey is essentially advanced faster than
(08:15):
the units on its flanks, and this leaves him dangerously
vulnerable to encirclement by the Germans. And unfortunately, on October third,
that is absolutely what will happen. At that point, Whittlesy
his runner post, where he's basically had soldiers running messages.
You know, they've been cut by the Germans. So the
only way Whittlesey can communicate at this point is using
(08:36):
one of the eight homing pigeons that he had men
carry with them when they advanced.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And you've been listening to Frank Blaizich a curator at
the National Museum of American History telling the story of
the role homing pigeons played in World War One. Can
you imagine telling black Jack Pershing and that, of course
was the man who was the general of the armies
in World War One? We need more pigeons and meaning it,
and of course we did. And when we come back,
(09:08):
we're going to learn more about the role these homing
pigeons played in saving American lives and helping win a war.
Here on our American stories, and we continue here on
(09:41):
our American stories. Historian Frank Blaizich from the National Museum
of American History has been telling us the story of
the use of homing pigeons during World War One. Major
Charles Whittlesey was leading a battalion through the Argonne Forest
during the bloodiest and largest operation of World War were One.
He and his men had advanced quickly and were now
(10:03):
surrounded by the Germans. His communication lines had been cut,
and the only means of communication he had left were
those pigeons. Back to Frank Blasich.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Beginning on October fourth, the Americans are still trapped there
on the side of the Charlottlo Ravine, the Germans are
still in forced surrounding them. Back at the seventy seventh
Division headquarters, the senior leadership is trying to figure out, well,
where exactly is Whittlesey, can't really find him beneath the
forest canopy, how do we support him? And what they're
going to do is they're going to decide to fire
(10:42):
an artillery barrage on the slope of the ridge south
of Whittlesey's position, and the hope here is that they're
going to hit the Germans kind of behind Whittlesey. Unfortunately,
they have the Whittlesey's position incorrectly documented, and instead of
dropping the shells around the Americans, the actual begin to
drop them on their own men. At that point, there's
(11:07):
only two pigeons left, and this is about three pm
in October four. Whittlesey finds his pigeoneers and the calls
for a bird, and he writes a very simple direct
message that reads, quote, we are along the road parallel
two seven six point four. Our own artillery is dropping
a barrage directly on us. For Heaven's sake, stop it.
(11:28):
When the pigeoneer prepares to remove one of the two birds,
from its protective basket. The bird basically breaks free of
his grasp and flies away. I should pause and remind
the listeners in all this time, there's artillery, friendly artillery
falling around the Americans. At this point, Whittlesy kind of
(11:50):
glared at this pigeoneer and quote uttered an uncharacteristically rude word.
We can use our imagination to say what he said.
His young private apologized, and at that point he grabbed
the last pigeon and held that bird firmly in his grasp.
They attached the message to the pigeon and release the
bird to hopefully fly up and out. But the pigeon
(12:12):
didn't fly up and out. The pigeon actually rose into
the air and circled two or three times, and then
it landed a short distance downhill on the limb of
a tree, and it appeared to clean its pran, its feathers,
clean itself. Whittlesy apparently turned to his pigeoneer and said,
can't you shoot away? I can't you make the bird move?
(12:33):
And if you can believe this, literally all these men
cowering for their lives and these these foxholes doing with
the candles to fight honors suddenly began yelling boo, and
they're throwing rocks and sticks at the pigeon. They're screaming
at it, anything to get it to move and fly away,
and the pigeon answers by by hopping to a higher branch.
(12:54):
At this point, the pigeoneer, and I haven't mentioned his name,
his name is Omer Richards. Omar Richards is already under
the gun, so to speak. He lost the first pigeon
and this is now his last pigeon. He gets up
out of his foxhole and kind of runs down to
the tree where the pigeon is in thunderfire. He begins
(13:14):
to climb up the tree trunk and he's shaking the
tree as he goes, and finally he reaches the branch
where this pigeon is perched, and he shakes it and
the bird finally flew away. At this point, the Germans,
who realize what's going on here, that the Americans are
trying to get a message out, they open up on
the pigeon with a small arms rifle, pistol shot, possibly
(13:34):
machine guns. At one point, one member of one American
remembered that a artillery shell exploded beneath the bird. And
he said it killed five of our men, but that
it seemingly stunned the pigeon or hurt the pigeon, and
the bird fluttered kind of near the bottom of the ravine.
Seemingly the last hope had been shot out of the sky.
(13:55):
So that was it. All the men could do at
this point was just sit and hope that the ERRATORI
fire would stop, which it did at three forty five PM.
The American leadership suddenly realized that they had the position
incorrect for Whittlesey, and that they were shelling their own men.
The word went out, you know, cease firing, seas firing.
Shortly after the shelling ceased, at about four h five,
(14:19):
this last pigeon arrived at Loft number eleven. They found
the message to hanging just from the remains of the
bird's right leg the ligaments, and that there was a
deep wound that cut across the breast of the bird.
They removed the message. They immediately relay it to the
headquarters by telephone, and they're able to bandage up the
(14:41):
bird's wounds, but they'll have to amputate the one leg
that's essentially no longer connected. Now Whittlesey and the man
of this force that is now known as the Lost Battalion.
They have no idea if the message from the pigeon
made it back to headquarters. They have to spend the
remainder of that afternoons of the evening, all through the
(15:03):
cold of the night, questioning their fate, if you will.
On the morning of October fifth, the Germans begin to
fire on them again. They're still surrounded, and at about
ten am there's another American artillery brage. Suffice to say,
those who experienced the horror of the previous day and
are assuming, well, great, here it comes again. However, in
(15:25):
this case the brage crept up on their position, but
then stopped and began to hit the Germans on the
other side of them. And to Whittlesey and the Captain McMurtry,
they recorded after the event that quote. This was proof
that the position of the command was understood by the
troops fighting forward to make the relief. The last pigeon
(15:46):
message had got through to its destination, so they knew
that the American leadership finally understood exactly where they were
to try to move forward to rescue them. And on
the afternoon of October seventh, and that evening the Lost
Battalion was rescued. Of the roughly six hundred and eighty
(16:06):
seven I've seen figures into the six hundred and ninety
men who entered the ravine, there were only one hundred
and ninety four who could walk out under their own power.
In terms of the pigeons involvement, you know what bird
was the bird that saved the lost Battalion, or as
people liked to claim today, there really is no mention
(16:26):
of pigeons until later in the media coverage of the
Lost Battalion, And eventually it will it will come out
in the press that yes, pigeons were used, but the
birds are nameless. Right, the humans are named, but the
birds are nameless. But after the Armistice of November eleventh,
(16:47):
nineteen eighteen, the army's initial plan as well, let's sell
all the pigeons, don't bring any of them home. But
Captain Buskell, in charge of the pigeon service, says, you know,
we should save some of these pigeons. We should certainly
save the pigeon that brought in his message of its
leg almost shot off and this incredible feet of bravery.
But we need to bring that bird home. At some point,
(17:10):
then the pigeon is named. The one name is Big Tom,
and later the name is changed to share a me.
So they're saying this bird lost its leg, took serious
wounds in the course of delivering its message, but never
says but none of the records say that this pigeon
was involved with the Lost Battalion. But that will all change.
(17:33):
April sixteenth, nineteen nineteen, when Captain Carney is the senior
officer escorting these hero pigeons home. There's lots of reporters
there at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey, and he
basically holds up Cheremi and says, you know, this is
the bird that saved the Lost Battalion. And the press
picks this up that the Lost Battalion and so many
American heroes is saved by the humblest of creatures, the
(17:56):
simple pigeon. And that's really when the Sheeremi's story goes
from questionable fact to just absolute gigantic legend. And it's
that story from this doc in Hoboken, New Jersey. That's
the first time this has ever come out. The problem is, unfortunately,
while Cheremi, whatever Shermi did and where and exactly when
(18:17):
There's no question, based on the bird's injuries, that it
did an incredibly heroic act. You can't definitively link it
to the Lost Battalion. Whatever the case may be. Cheremi
becomes this darling of the American public and the US Army.
Little Cheremi will die, most likely on June thirteenth, nineteen nineteen.
(18:39):
Quite frankly, the wounds, particularly that chest wound, is so
severe that the bird is just not able to recover
from it. But because Chemie was thankfully saved and taxidermy,
the physical object in some respects serves as a memorial
not just to the heroism of the pigeons and the
heroism of animals World War One, but a way the
heroism of the Lost Battalion, and even veterans of the
(19:01):
Lost Battalion would come to the US National Museum as
it was known at the time prior to it becoming
the National Museum American History, and they would show their
children and say, that little pigeon is the reason that
I survive today. If you owe your life to that
little pigeon. The power of the myths such no amount
of research publication will probably ever overcome this public desire
(19:24):
to link share Me to the Lost Battalion. But I
like to look at Charm as this kind of amazing
representative of the power of even the smallest participating in
more to make a difference.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And a great team effort on the production Madison, Robbie
and Faith and also a special thanks to historian Frank
Blazich from the National Museum of American History. By the way,
in nineteen thirty one, share A Mei was inducted into
Racing Pigeon Hall of Fame. In twenty nineteen in ab
Girl recipient of the Animals in War and Peace Medal
(20:03):
of Bravery the story of homing pigeons in World War One.
Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
we have a history story from Frank blaze, a curator
at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.
During World War One, Europe began to look to homing
pigeons as a means of communication. Trench warfare was no
place for radio or wired lines that were easily tapped
(00:34):
or damaged, and so they turned to pigeons. Here's Frank
Blazich with a story.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Why pigeons of all things. Well, ancient history is a
bit sketchy and about how accurate it is. We do
know that in the nineteenth century pigeons be used to
reliably send small messages from essentially point A to point B.
This was most notable in the Siege of Paris and
the Franco Prussian War from eighteen seventy to seventy one,
(01:13):
where the French were able to in some cases move
pigeons out of Paris by balloon, and then the pigeons
could transmit. They would actually carry essentially early microfilmed messages
from outside Paris back into Paris and vice versa, and
so the French uses to get around the German siege
with some success. After the siege was over. A lot
(01:39):
of the world's militaries took note of this and said, hmm,
we might want to develop this capability, if you will,
for our uses. And so you see a number of
governments in europegin to develop homing pigeon effort offices, programs
and so forth within their militaries. The United States doesn't,
We begin to kind of play around with pigeons fermenting
(02:00):
at best, but we long story short, we just don't
really develop the capability until in nineteen seventeen, the German
government informs Wilson that they're going to engage in unrestricted
submarine warfare. The Germans finally say, one of the only
ways that we're going to begin to really knock Britain
out of the war or severely curtail their war effort
(02:22):
on the Western Front is to sink the merchant ships
that are bringing food and supplies and other aid to
the British no miles. And so they'll unleash their U
boats to do unrestricted warfare, and President Wilson will go
to Congress request the declaration of war, which Congress grants.
(02:44):
In the United States centers the war in April sixth
nineteen seventeen. We're bright eyed and bushy tailed, so to speak,
in entering the war. But again we don't have any pigeons.
When the first American troops officers will begin to head
overseas to England in France in Junion of nineteen seventeen,
they have this massive learning curve to get caught up
(03:06):
with the conflict itself and the various technologies that the
combatants have been engaged in over the previous few years.
A good example of this when the first American troops
will actually arrive in France, they don't have helmets. We
don't have what we think of today something very commonplace.
We don't actually have steel helmets in use for our soldiers.
(03:28):
They come ashore wearing felt campaign hats, something you'd see
in the American West. The US Navy, the first time
we send ships overseas in May nineteen seventeen, they had
never seen a depth charge before, which had only recently
been developed to basically combat German U boats. This is
all completely new to the US military, so the learning
curve is quite steep, and that includes pigeons. And when
(03:53):
the US Armies signal officers, particularly Colonel Edgar A. Russell,
the chief signal officer to General John J. Pershing, commanding
the American Expeditionary Forces. When he begins to meet with
his counterparts in the British and French armies, they basically say,
you need to get pigeons. These work, they're proven, and
(04:14):
in this kind of fighting in the trenches, with the
risk of your communications being cut by artillery or other means,
pigeons are really the best option in a pinch to
get your information from may to be so. In July
of nineteen seventeen, the call is sent from Russell to
Major General Georgia Squire, and he's the Chief Signal officer
(04:36):
of the entire United States Army, and he basically says,
we need pigeons, right, we need to set up this service.
And General Pershing will then request two officers as well
as I think about a dozen enlisted men to come
over to France and set up a pigeon service for
the US Army. We have about twenty five hundred birds
(04:57):
roughly when we start the English. The British Expeditionary Force
they have had they've been using pigeons for years now,
and in May of nineteen eighteen they will actually give
the United States Army six hundred young pigeons. So that's
how the bird that we now know is Charmy will
(05:17):
first come into the US Army on May twentieth, nineteen eighteen,
arguably a conscripted so to speak, or selected to join
the United States Army. So in terms of the training
of the pigeons, the pigeons are usually about four to
six weeks old, and at that point they're moved into
what are called mobile lofts. And the best way to
(05:40):
describe I like to refer to the mobile loft as
a pigeon RV. It's basically a large wooden kind of
like box car that's put on a truck truck frame
which has leaf spring suspension so forth, so you can
move it. You can actually move. The loft with the
movement of the armies. Is really the home. That is
(06:02):
where the birds are going to eat, that's where they're
going to sleep in some cases, that's where they're going
to find their mate and breed, and that is what
they're going to return to at all points in time.
And so once the birds are in the loft, you're
training the bird that if it wants to eat, it
has to come home to the loft if it wants
to return to its mate, be it a male or female.
(06:22):
I should pause and say, pigeons mate for life, So
the birds want to return to their partner. In whatever case,
the birds have this desire understandably to get back home.
Share me in July of nineteen eighteen is assigned to
Mobile Loft number eleven. That bird, as well as Loft
(06:45):
number eleven, will find itself in September of nineteen eighteen
preparing for the launch of the meuse Argone offensive. And
this is still the bloodiest operation in American military history,
and we had something like five hundred and fifty nine
Americans killed in action every single day for forty seven
I think it's forty seven consecutive days. So it's an
(07:08):
incredibly costly, costly offensive, but it's really the culmination of
America's involvement in World War One on the battlefield, and
pigeons will absolutely play a major part of this. These
pigeons for Mobile Loft number eleven as well Mobile Loff
(07:30):
number nine will support soldiers of the seventy seventh Infantry
Division and now they're going to be fighting through the
Argonne Forest. There is the first battalion of the three
hundred eighth Infantry Regiment of the seventy seventh Division is
commanded by a Major Charles W. Whittlesey, and Whittlesy is
going to receive orders to essentially advance to what is
(07:53):
known as the Levergette Moulone de Charlevo Binnerville Road through
the forest, and he's told that once he reaches the road,
he's to halt and wait for reinforcement. Whittlesy gets to
the road, he then basically sends a message back, I'm here.
The problem here is Whittlesey is essentially advanced faster than
(08:15):
the units on its flanks, and this leaves him dangerously
vulnerable to encirclement by the Germans. And unfortunately, on October third,
that is absolutely what will happen. At that point, Whittlesy
his runner post, where he's basically had soldiers running messages.
You know, they've been cut by the Germans. So the
only way Whittlesey can communicate at this point is using
(08:36):
one of the eight homing pigeons that he had men
carry with them when they advanced.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And you've been listening to Frank Blaizich a curator at
the National Museum of American History telling the story of
the role homing pigeons played in World War One. Can
you imagine telling black Jack Pershing and that, of course
was the man who was the general of the armies
in World War One? We need more pigeons and meaning it,
and of course we did. And when we come back,
(09:08):
we're going to learn more about the role these homing
pigeons played in saving American lives and helping win a war.
Here on our American stories, and we continue here on
(09:41):
our American stories. Historian Frank Blaizich from the National Museum
of American History has been telling us the story of
the use of homing pigeons during World War One. Major
Charles Whittlesey was leading a battalion through the Argonne Forest
during the bloodiest and largest operation of World War were One.
He and his men had advanced quickly and were now
(10:03):
surrounded by the Germans. His communication lines had been cut,
and the only means of communication he had left were
those pigeons. Back to Frank Blasich.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Beginning on October fourth, the Americans are still trapped there
on the side of the Charlottlo Ravine, the Germans are
still in forced surrounding them. Back at the seventy seventh
Division headquarters, the senior leadership is trying to figure out, well,
where exactly is Whittlesey, can't really find him beneath the
forest canopy, how do we support him? And what they're
going to do is they're going to decide to fire
(10:42):
an artillery barrage on the slope of the ridge south
of Whittlesey's position, and the hope here is that they're
going to hit the Germans kind of behind Whittlesey. Unfortunately,
they have the Whittlesey's position incorrectly documented, and instead of
dropping the shells around the Americans, the actual begin to
drop them on their own men. At that point, there's
(11:07):
only two pigeons left, and this is about three pm
in October four. Whittlesey finds his pigeoneers and the calls
for a bird, and he writes a very simple direct
message that reads, quote, we are along the road parallel
two seven six point four. Our own artillery is dropping
a barrage directly on us. For Heaven's sake, stop it.
(11:28):
When the pigeoneer prepares to remove one of the two birds,
from its protective basket. The bird basically breaks free of
his grasp and flies away. I should pause and remind
the listeners in all this time, there's artillery, friendly artillery
falling around the Americans. At this point, Whittlesy kind of
(11:50):
glared at this pigeoneer and quote uttered an uncharacteristically rude word.
We can use our imagination to say what he said.
His young private apologized, and at that point he grabbed
the last pigeon and held that bird firmly in his grasp.
They attached the message to the pigeon and release the
bird to hopefully fly up and out. But the pigeon
(12:12):
didn't fly up and out. The pigeon actually rose into
the air and circled two or three times, and then
it landed a short distance downhill on the limb of
a tree, and it appeared to clean its pran, its feathers,
clean itself. Whittlesy apparently turned to his pigeoneer and said,
can't you shoot away? I can't you make the bird move?
(12:33):
And if you can believe this, literally all these men
cowering for their lives and these these foxholes doing with
the candles to fight honors suddenly began yelling boo, and
they're throwing rocks and sticks at the pigeon. They're screaming
at it, anything to get it to move and fly away,
and the pigeon answers by by hopping to a higher branch.
(12:54):
At this point, the pigeoneer, and I haven't mentioned his name,
his name is Omer Richards. Omar Richards is already under
the gun, so to speak. He lost the first pigeon
and this is now his last pigeon. He gets up
out of his foxhole and kind of runs down to
the tree where the pigeon is in thunderfire. He begins
(13:14):
to climb up the tree trunk and he's shaking the
tree as he goes, and finally he reaches the branch
where this pigeon is perched, and he shakes it and
the bird finally flew away. At this point, the Germans,
who realize what's going on here, that the Americans are
trying to get a message out, they open up on
the pigeon with a small arms rifle, pistol shot, possibly
(13:34):
machine guns. At one point, one member of one American
remembered that a artillery shell exploded beneath the bird. And
he said it killed five of our men, but that
it seemingly stunned the pigeon or hurt the pigeon, and
the bird fluttered kind of near the bottom of the ravine.
Seemingly the last hope had been shot out of the sky.
(13:55):
So that was it. All the men could do at
this point was just sit and hope that the ERRATORI
fire would stop, which it did at three forty five PM.
The American leadership suddenly realized that they had the position
incorrect for Whittlesey, and that they were shelling their own men.
The word went out, you know, cease firing, seas firing.
Shortly after the shelling ceased, at about four h five,
(14:19):
this last pigeon arrived at Loft number eleven. They found
the message to hanging just from the remains of the
bird's right leg the ligaments, and that there was a
deep wound that cut across the breast of the bird.
They removed the message. They immediately relay it to the
headquarters by telephone, and they're able to bandage up the
(14:41):
bird's wounds, but they'll have to amputate the one leg
that's essentially no longer connected. Now Whittlesey and the man
of this force that is now known as the Lost Battalion.
They have no idea if the message from the pigeon
made it back to headquarters. They have to spend the
remainder of that afternoons of the evening, all through the
(15:03):
cold of the night, questioning their fate, if you will.
On the morning of October fifth, the Germans begin to
fire on them again. They're still surrounded, and at about
ten am there's another American artillery brage. Suffice to say,
those who experienced the horror of the previous day and
are assuming, well, great, here it comes again. However, in
(15:25):
this case the brage crept up on their position, but
then stopped and began to hit the Germans on the
other side of them. And to Whittlesey and the Captain McMurtry,
they recorded after the event that quote. This was proof
that the position of the command was understood by the
troops fighting forward to make the relief. The last pigeon
(15:46):
message had got through to its destination, so they knew
that the American leadership finally understood exactly where they were
to try to move forward to rescue them. And on
the afternoon of October seventh, and that evening the Lost
Battalion was rescued. Of the roughly six hundred and eighty
(16:06):
seven I've seen figures into the six hundred and ninety
men who entered the ravine, there were only one hundred
and ninety four who could walk out under their own power.
In terms of the pigeons involvement, you know what bird
was the bird that saved the lost Battalion, or as
people liked to claim today, there really is no mention
(16:26):
of pigeons until later in the media coverage of the
Lost Battalion, And eventually it will it will come out
in the press that yes, pigeons were used, but the
birds are nameless. Right, the humans are named, but the
birds are nameless. But after the Armistice of November eleventh,
(16:47):
nineteen eighteen, the army's initial plan as well, let's sell
all the pigeons, don't bring any of them home. But
Captain Buskell, in charge of the pigeon service, says, you know,
we should save some of these pigeons. We should certainly
save the pigeon that brought in his message of its
leg almost shot off and this incredible feet of bravery.
But we need to bring that bird home. At some point,
(17:10):
then the pigeon is named. The one name is Big Tom,
and later the name is changed to share a me.
So they're saying this bird lost its leg, took serious
wounds in the course of delivering its message, but never
says but none of the records say that this pigeon
was involved with the Lost Battalion. But that will all change.
(17:33):
April sixteenth, nineteen nineteen, when Captain Carney is the senior
officer escorting these hero pigeons home. There's lots of reporters
there at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey, and he
basically holds up Cheremi and says, you know, this is
the bird that saved the Lost Battalion. And the press
picks this up that the Lost Battalion and so many
American heroes is saved by the humblest of creatures, the
(17:56):
simple pigeon. And that's really when the Sheeremi's story goes
from questionable fact to just absolute gigantic legend. And it's
that story from this doc in Hoboken, New Jersey. That's
the first time this has ever come out. The problem is, unfortunately,
while Cheremi, whatever Shermi did and where and exactly when
(18:17):
There's no question, based on the bird's injuries, that it
did an incredibly heroic act. You can't definitively link it
to the Lost Battalion. Whatever the case may be. Cheremi
becomes this darling of the American public and the US Army.
Little Cheremi will die, most likely on June thirteenth, nineteen nineteen.
(18:39):
Quite frankly, the wounds, particularly that chest wound, is so
severe that the bird is just not able to recover
from it. But because Chemie was thankfully saved and taxidermy,
the physical object in some respects serves as a memorial
not just to the heroism of the pigeons and the
heroism of animals World War One, but a way the
heroism of the Lost Battalion, and even veterans of the
(19:01):
Lost Battalion would come to the US National Museum as
it was known at the time prior to it becoming
the National Museum American History, and they would show their
children and say, that little pigeon is the reason that
I survive today. If you owe your life to that
little pigeon. The power of the myths such no amount
of research publication will probably ever overcome this public desire
(19:24):
to link share Me to the Lost Battalion. But I
like to look at Charm as this kind of amazing
representative of the power of even the smallest participating in
more to make a difference.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
And a great team effort on the production Madison, Robbie
and Faith and also a special thanks to historian Frank
Blazich from the National Museum of American History. By the way,
in nineteen thirty one, share A Mei was inducted into
Racing Pigeon Hall of Fame. In twenty nineteen in ab
Girl recipient of the Animals in War and Peace Medal
(20:03):
of Bravery the story of homing pigeons in World War One.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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