There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

28 Cher Ami

Cher Ami 131 28 Cher Ami After the end of World War I, a scarred survivor of the Western Front came to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The veteran had lost a leg in air combat and had been honored by General John Pershing for saving hundreds of American lives. When this hero died, in June 1919, its body was stuffed by a taxidermist and placed on display in the Smithsonian , where it can be seen today. As the reader may have guessed by now, we’re talking pigeons, not people. The veteran was U.S. Army pigeon number NURP-18–615, known familiarly as “Cher Ami.” There is some confusion about Cher Ami’s gender. The Signal Corps records of World War I list NURP-18–615 as a blue check hen. But the standard reference work The Pigeon by Wendell Levi, a former president of the National Pigeon Association, describes Cher Ami as a blue check cock. It’s this sort of thing that makes people skeptical of history. For the sake of gender equity, we will treat her as female. Carrier pigeons, or “racing homers,” have been used to carry messages in wartime for thousands of years. They don’t have wires that can break, batteries that can run down, or broadcasts that can be overheard. Plus, they basically work for chicken feed. World War I brought the United States into the pigeon business in a big way. Within a few months of American entry into the war, the Signal Corps established training and breeding centers at Fort Monmouth and elsewhere and invented portable lofts that could be moved quickly around the front. By the time the Great War was over, fifteen thousand pigeons were in American uniform, so to speak. (The uniform consisted of a metal leg band stamped with the serial number.) Cher Ami was one of five hundred pigeons given by the British to the American Expeditionary Force for use on the Western Front. Her moment of glory came during the Argonne forest offensive in October 132 There’s More to New Jersey . . . 1918. A battalion of the Seventy-seventh Division moving in advance of the rest of the army was cut off and surrounded by German troops. Enemy machine-gun fire, mortars, and hand grenades rained in on the battalion. Even worse, the battalion was being devastated by the friendly fire of American artillery. Other pigeons sent out by the battalion were shot out of the sky. Then Cher Ami was released (or liberated, to use the appealing technical term) with a message in a tube attached to her leg: “We are Cher Ami This heroic pigeon, Cher Ami, is credited with saving American soldiers in World War I. After the war, the bird lived at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; its stuffed body is now on display in the Smithsonian. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, photographer Jeff Tinsley. Cher Ami 133 along the road parallel 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” The bird paused on a branch to preen itself until a doughboy climbed the tree and shooed her into the air. Cher Ami made the forty-kilometer trip to her roost at division headquarters in twenty-five minutes. When she arrived, it was found that a piece of shrapnel had cut off her leg and penetrated her chest—the message tube dangled by a tendon. But the communication got through and the artillery barrage was lifted. A short time later, the Lost Battalion, as it came to be called, was rescued. After the war, Cher Ami was brought to the Signal Corps center at Fort Monmouth, along with other celebrated pigeon survivors of the war. One of them was “President Wilson,” who also lost a leg on the Western Front and who is today on display next to Cher Ami in the Smithsonian. Another was “The Mocker,” who lost an eye and the top of his head but who lived for twenty years after the war and whose carcass was for many years exhibited in the post library. “G.I. Joe,” a celebrated pigeon of World War II, was a later retiree at Fort Monmouth. He is credited with saving a thousand troops on the Italian front in 1943 by bringing the message that a town that the Allies were about to bomb was occupied by British infantry. He...