CARRIER PIGEONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 8 (Supplement)

CARRIER PIGEONS.

FAITHFUL SERVICE. ANCIENT AND MODERN USE GREAT WAR MESSENGERS. Always faithful, the speediest homing pigeon in the United States Army, has received a gold medal for outstanding performance in the year 1935. He won the recent Chattanooga national pigeon race, against 1114 other racers, flying 715 miles at an average speed of 47 miles per hour, states a writer in the "New York Times." In the past American pigeons have established some astonishing records. They have flown more than 1000 miles to their home lofts across mountain and valley, .river and plain. They have maintained speeds in excess of a mile a minute for more than 300 milev a t a stretch. Raced in Solomon's Day. Through the centuries pigeons have been the symbols of flight and messengers of the written word. History is not clear as to when they were first employed to do the bidding of man, but it is at least certain that they were raced in the time of Solomon. Cyrus, king of the Persians and the Medes, used them five centuries before the Christian era to send messages to various parts of his empire. The names of victors" in the early Olympic Games were sped to the cities of ancient Greece by pigeon. Before' the advent of radio, pigeons were used exclusively in war and to

proved the most dependable .of all methods of contact. _ A homing bird called President Wilson is officially credited with saving the lives of many American soldiers during one flight above the pock-marked fields of the Argonne. It was dawn of November 5, 1918. Advanced infantry units of the First Division found themselves in a precarious position, unsupported and cut off from the main body of troops. Their lines of communication were severed; it was impossible to contact divisional headquarters at Ramport, 25 miles in the rear. In between was a steel curtain of dropping shells from the German artillery. Runners tried to make their way back through it, in vain. Then President Wilson, carrier pigeon of the signal corps detachment with the advance units, was entrusted with a message to Ramport. Half an hour later lie fluttered to earth at Ramport. The message, still intact, hung from a shattered leg. One bullet had penetrated the bird's breast, another had torn the ligaments of one leg. But it took more than that to stay his flight. This bird her.o died at the Signal Corps lofts in Monmouth, New Jersey, a few years later. Hia body was stuffed and mounted, and placed on display in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.