Captain Lederman, Jungle Joe, Burma Queen and Blackie Halligan.
Remember these names, my friends, for they are war heroes.
They also, as a matter of a fact, happen to be pigeons.
We read about them this week on the UK-based historian Jonathan Saha’s blog, which may be the most interesting blog in the world (if you think colonial history and animals are really interesting, which we do, as you can tell from the enthusiastic tone of this post).
The fighting in Burma during World War II has long been obscured behind the allied victory in Europe and Japan. But it was brutal, and one of the reasons was the tropical, mountainous terrain. As a result, animals played an important role in transport and conveying messages.
Saha explains:
“Total war was a more-than-human phenomenon and during the Second World War a variety of animals were mobilized and killed,” he writes in the September 20 post. “The Burma theatre was no exception. I was recently reminded of this when a couple of friends shared a reprint of an article celebrating the war work done by carrier pigeons.”
He duly posts a reprint of a piece in the Racing Pigeon Digest in 1998, which in turn had reprinted an article from the Racing Pigeon Review in 1946, about a year after the end of the war.
The headline?
“Army Pigeons: Hall of Fame.”
Carrier pigeons have been used for hundreds of years if not much longer, but there is something about the exploits of these brave birds that the term “carrier pigeon” doesn’t cover at all.
Consider the work of Captain Lederman, a blue check cock born in September of 1944.
Barely three months later, the captain delivered a message from a patrol operating 120 miles behind Japanese lines. In early 1945, he was “dropped by parachute or taken by bamboo jump containers to patrols operating along or behind enemy lines.”
Jungle Joe’s feats are even crazier.
At four months old he was hurled out of an airplane in a parachute container behind enemy lines.
The article describes only some of the dramatic events that followed.
“During the course of the jump the radio operator became lost from the rest of the party. A long search failed to find him and it is believed that he was captured.”
Go to the blog post to read more – and about other animals exploits during the war – but this is just to say, the next time a pigeon poops on you in Yangon, think about Jungle Joe and Captain Lederman and the rest, and look up at the sky and salute.
Stock photo of pigeons via Flickr / jans canon
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