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In a field in northeastern France a message of more than a century about maneuvers by the German army has been found that was being carried by a pigeon.
In a field in northeastern France a message of more than a century about maneuvers by the German army has been found that was being carried by a pigeon.
Jade Halaoui, who was hiking in the Alsace region with her partner, saw the 5 cm long aluminum cylinder in a field in mid-September.
“I dug it up and then cut it up to see what was inside,” he told Les Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace newspaper.
He found a small piece of paper, in good condition, with something written on it. But the text was in a kind of Old German, so he took it to the Linge Memorial museum, where curator Dominique Jardy was excited by the find.
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“When he described the object to me, he was freaking out,” Jardy said. “This is a rare find.” I hadn’t seen one before.
Jardy called a German-speaking friend to help him translate the message. It turned out that the message was probably sent on July 16, 1910, but there is a small chance that the year was 1916. From 1871 to 1918 the area was part of Germany.
The pigeon sent to the mission was one of four that carried the same message, which was from an officer who was part of a Prussian infantry regiment participating in military exercises in the area.
It speaks of a section commanded by someone named Potthoff. The section “takes the fire” as a point, then “retaliates and retires after a while.” He retired after heavy losses.
FAKE IMAGES
Carrier pigeons were widely used to communicate in World War I. (File photo)
Jardy said the capsule had most likely slipped from the pigeon carrying it, as it was found a few hundred meters from the point from which it was sent.
The capsule and message will be kept at the museum, but Jardy said the paper was too fragile to display, so a copy would have to be displayed.
Homing pigeons were widely used to communicate in World War I, and the Linge museum commemorates a bloody battle fought in the area in 1915.
