Pigeon Post by Judith Allnatt

Communication was no easy matter during World War One. There’s an old joke about a message that originated as ‘Send reinforcements; we’re going to advance’ but which eventually arrived as ‘Send three and fourpence; we’re going to a dance!’ Although admittedly amusing, the joke has a dark side when one thinks of the consequences of inaccurate communication when applied to crucial military messages, and the difficulties of passing on messages verbally were by no means the only ones encountered.

Signallers using flash lamp near Bouzincourt, 10th July 1916.

Where military positions were established, messages could be sent to and from HQs telephonically once Signallers had laid down cables along trenches or buried them in the ground. This was dangerous work in itself and wires often needed repairing, leading to loss of life. However, when attacking, it was difficult to keep pace with an advancing force and impossible to connect sideways to other battalions moving forward in parallel. As a result, some ingenious communication methods were adopted.

In addition to the use of rare and cumbersome radios and runners who may or may not survive a journey fraught with mines, artillery fire and snipers, vast numbers of pigeons were housed in mobile pigeon lofts so that they could be moved around the field of conflict. A smaller number could then be carried in a wicker basket on a man’s back to a position in the line and released to return ‘home’ with messages in tiny cylinders attached to the bird’s leg. 

The Royal Engineers Signals Service on the Western Front, 1914-1918
A former London double-decker bus camouflage painted, used as a travelling loft for carrier-pigeons. Pernes, 26 June 1918.

 Pigeons have a ‘sixth’ sense – the ability to detect and navigate using the earth’s magnetic field. Although the mechanism for this homing sense was not understood during the Great War, in the 1980s researchers discovered tiny crystals of magnetite inside nerve endings in the upper part of the beaks of pigeons which detect the strength of the earth’s magnetic field. Others found that chemical reactions induced by light entering the bird’s right eye allow awareness of the direction of the magnetic field. These two together enable the bird to ‘see’ the magnetic field and find their way home.

As well as taking messages from the trenches to the rear, pigeons were taken up in planes being used for reconnaissance to bear messages from aviators to HQ. Even more ingenious was the practice of fastening a small camera to the bird’s chest and releasing it at a pre-planned time. Aware of the route the bird would take to get home, the camera could be attached to a timer that operated the shutter, thereby collecting aerial images – literally a bird’s eye view!

Sergeant of the Royal Engineers Signals Section putting a message into the cylinder attached to the collar of a messenger dog at Etaples, 28 August 1918. McLellan, David (Second Lieutenant) (Photographer)

Dogs were also used to carry messages or sometimes even to carry other messengers, as pigeon baskets could be strapped onto their backs.

Before basic radio transmitters, communication from a plane, to inform on the fall of enemy artillery for instance, was initially by dropping messages inside weighted streamers over the side. Kite balloons were also used for reconnaissance over enemy lines. Two observers went up in the wicker basket fixed beneath. One cable was used to tether the balloon to a lorry and the other to relay telephonic messages. The balloons made easy targets and, under fire, men ‘bailed out’ with parachutes. 

Disembarking from a kite balloon

Despite these resourceful methods, communication difficulties must have hamstrung officers making decisions on the ground. Once an attack had started there was no quick, reliable way to contact troops to redirect them or to call for reinforcements. There may be other reasons underpinning the epithet ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ but the lack of timely, dependable communication must have been a contributory factor in many decisions that turned out to be bad ones and resulted in an incalculable number of casualties.

'This useful little book' - by Sheena Wilkinson

Second in my occasional series about charming little books from the past.

This one is a tiny waistcoat diary from 1919, found many years ago in a junk shop; I no longer remember when or where.  It was a free gift, given away by Hargreaves Brothers and Co, of Gipsyville, Hull, makers of black lead and metal polish. I often wondered about who had owned it in 1919, and what their life was like. I’ve always been interested in WW1 but especially in the immediate post-war years, when people tried to adjust to the huge upheaval of the war. 

I’ve always kept the little book in my desk; in my mind it was associated with inspiration, especially when I began to write stories about the period. I also used it as a good luck charm – I had it with me for my first proper job interview in 1994, and when I went to meet my agent for the first time in 2009. A four-leaved clover is pressed between two of its pages, and I no longer know if I put it there, or if it was there when I bought it. (Romance inclines me towards the latter, but truth compels me to say that pressing four-leaved clovers in old books is exactly the sort of thing I do.)

As with any artefact, it tells us so much more than it was ever meant to. In some ways it’s disappointing – the really interesting thing would be to find a diary that someone had written in. Only a few pages have anything hand-written and it’s of a dull listish nature and sadly illegible. But perhaps whoever owned it didn’t need it because they already had a diary. You see, this little free gift didn’t appear in time for the 1919 new year – because of paper shortages, ‘it became necessary at the end of 1917 to discontinue the issue of this useful little book… in order to comply with the instructions of the ‘Paper Commission.’

The end of hostilities in November 1918 led to the unexpected publication of the ‘useful little book’, but it starts in February. It’s as if January 1919 had been missed out. Which made me think about January 1919: a turn of year that should have been very hopeful  – the ‘war to end war’ was over, after all. But January 1919 was a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty and grief. There was bitter labour unrest, with cities like Glasgow and my own Belfast plunged into darkness by strikes. Demobilisation was slow and inefficient, with the first to enlist often the last to be released, leading to near mutiny. The papers thrummed with anxiety about what sort of a peace settlement would be reached. And the third wave of the great flu pandemic was rearing its head – the pandemic lasted about a year and did not really die down until summer 1919, killing upwards of 50 million people worldwide. All in all, a month many would be glad to see removed from memory, rather in the way that people at the turn of 2017, are lamenting the horrors of 2016.

Forgetting is not of course the way to make sense of painful pasts. We in Northern Ireland know that better than many. The printers of this little diary, with its pages devoted to the decorations awarded in the ‘Great European and other wars of recent years’ know that.

Now that I am writing two books set in this period – one in late 1918, one in spring 1919, this old diary has acquired yet another significance for me, as a great way to check days and dates, sunrise and sunset, etc. I can of course find the same information online, but how much nicer to use this tiny little leather-bound book, hoping that, unreadable though the ink might be, something of its essence might come through the pages, through the years, and help me and my characters on our way.