5. Decorated War Pigeons

The man in this National Library of Scotland image, is a French pigeon trainer.

Here is a photo that appears to be the same man, from a real photo postcard from Université de Caen Normandie.

During WWI there were 20,000 birds and 380 expert pigeon trainers in the British Army. The pigeons were transported via wicker basket, sometimes in backpacks.

There are 32 decorated war pigeons.

The French and British weren’t the only troops using pigeons. The Japanese also used pigeons to shuttle messages during wartime as shown in this Library of Congress photograph.

The Nationaal Archief shows exactly how these pigeons were deployed.