Feathered Friend

  By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.

I chose "Cher Ami" as the name for our electronic newsletter for entirely right and proper reasons. Those of you who know me well are probably flabbergasted that I chose a French name and most of you are probably unfamiliar with the name’s connection with Lost Battalion Games. At any rate, we’ve had some questions about the name for our newsletter and this column should answer them. It’s simple; really, "Cher Ami" was a bird who played a key role in the saga of the real "Lost Battalion."

To explain, it’s time for Unca Craig to present a little history lesson. The army first experimented with homing pigeons in the Dakota Territory, as it was then, in the 1870s. The test was a complete fiasco, thanks to the voracious hawk and eagle population in the Dakotas in those distant frontier days, not to mention hungry Indians and starving settlers. The army, being the army, countered failure by getting more money from Congress and continuing operations in places with fewer flying predators and better beaches, such as Florida. When "Black Jack" Pershing led his punitive expedition into Mexico in 1916, some noisy crates full of crack homing pigeons were part of the force looking for "Pancho" Villa. Since, mysteriously, the first army aircraft had been assigned to the Signal Corps, the pigeons, who also had wings, were assigned to the same outfit shortly after the United States entered World War One.

The troopships carrying 2,000,000 of our doughboys "over there," also shipped over some 7,000 patriotic pigeons. The Americans trained hard in the trenches during 1917 and played a key role in the tough fighting that halted the German spring offensives in 1918. The homing pigeons proved their worth whenever ground lines were cut or messengers were too slow. As the Allies switched over to the offensive, the United States Army was assigned its own section of the front and its own part in the Allied fall offensive.

The German army had held the Argonne Forest sector for four years and was well-entrenched in its positions. New York’s 77th "Times Square" Infantry Division, on the far left flank of the American attack on September 26, was in the thick of the fighting and drove ahead rapidly. When the attack stalled by October 1, "Black Jack" Pershing was furious and ordered the assault to resume "without regard of losses and without regard to the exposed conditions of the flanks…." Major Charles Whittlesey, in peacetime a Wall Street lawyer, commanding the battered remnants of his battalion, protested these orders but then followed them to the letter and drove ahead on a narrow front while flanking elements were stopped cold. When the Germans closed in behind him, Whittlesey and some 450 men and eight pigeons were surrounded and trapped behind enemy lines for a week, becoming known as the "Lost Battalion." Ably assisted by fellow battalion commander Captain George McMurty, a veteran of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill, Whittlesey formed an all-round defense. Repeated German attacks on the perimeter were repulsed by the soldiers’ small arms and sporadic artillery support. Rations and ammunition, augmented by air drops, were scarce and the defenders’ only reinforcements were less than 100 men under Captain Nelson Holderman, who managed to slip through the German lines.

On the sixth day, the shrinking pocket was being blown apart by misplaced "friendly" artillery fire. With only two pigeons left, Whittlesey ordered one sent to stop the barrage. The first pigeon escaped before a message could be attached. The last pigeon, old hand "Cher Ami," who had already successfully delivered eleven messages in earlier fighting, was the last chance to deliver a message to halt the friendly fire. "Cher Ami," which in French means "Dear Friend" and not "Suicidal Pigeon," was a reluctant hero; with all the bullets whizzing by and shrapnel filling the air, it struck the bird’s little avian brain as a bad time to break cover. His handlers had to yell, shake his tree and throw rocks at the bird before he finally flew off on his historic mission. Over a quarter of the American pigeons used during the bloody Meuse-Argonne offensive were killed – the German soldiers made an enjoyable sport of shooting them down and they were a welcome change from field rations. "Cher Ami" was hit by a bullet that tore off one leg and shattered his breastbone but still fluttered twenty-five miles in thirty minutes to deliver the message. The barrage was lifted and the Lost Battalion hung on until relieved, one of the proudest and most legendary exploits of the American Expeditionary Force in the Great War. Only 190 soldiers, some of them wounded, marched out of the pocket, 190 more were badly wounded, including Captain Holderman, 107 were dead and 63 were missing. One other wounded survivor, "Cher Ami," was patched up by a veterinarian and fitted with a little wooden leg.

Whittlesey, McMurty and Holderman all received the Medal of Honor and "Cher Ami" received the French Croix de Guerre with palm. The proud pigeon was an honored veteran until his untimely death in 1919. "Cher Ami" has the distinction of being the only member of the Lost Battalion to be stuffed and added to the Smithsonian collections.

So there you have it, boys and girls. That’s why Lost Battalion Games has a newsletter called "Cher Ami."

For some information about the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in France during the First World War, see the "Sultan Black Jack" article elsewhere in our "A Mystery Called History Feature".