During the First World War, carrier pigeons played a vital role as a means of communication between the battlefront and the command post or headquarters. Their ease of training, their speed and endurance over long distances, along with their excellent visual memory, made them an invaluable tool for maintaining communication when cable lines were vulnerable to attack.
Trained by American pigeon fanciers, Cher Ami was donated by the British Armed Forces for use as a messenger in the US Army Communications Corps in France.
The highlight of the bird’s career occurred at the bloody Battle of Meuse-Argonne, northwest France, on October 3, 1918. Just over a month before the Great War came to an end, a group of Approximately 554 American soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division, under the command of Major Charles White Whittlesey, were surrounded by German forces in the Argonne Forest.
Isolated, with a shortage of food and ammunition to defend themselves, the Lost Battalion received fire not only from enemy artillery, but also from the American troops themselves, who were unaware of the situation of these soldiers. Many were killed, others were wounded or held prisoner, and only 194 remained alive.
Major Whittlesey turned to pigeons to alert the command post. He wrote several messages requesting help, but they did not reach his destination. The birds were shot down by the Germans. The battalion placed its hope in the last available pigeon, Cher Ami, whose name in French means “dear friend.” Whittlesey tied a desperate note to his right paw: “We are next to the highway parallel 276.4. Our own artillery is launching a bombardment directly on us. For the love of God, stop it!”
Dressed in its bluish plumage, the bird had to fly over the dangerous combat zone. As enemy bullets, nearby explosions, and smoke threatened her flight, Cher Ami kept going, defying fear. She had been trained as a carrier pigeon, she mastered flying and knew where her command post was located. She had to overcome fear, because if she didn’t, it would become another ruthless enemy.
With its message and completely alone, the dove flew above the adversary but, as had happened with its companions, it was hit by the fragments of a projectile. Her pain enveloped her like the thick smoke of the battlefield. She had been seriously wounded in the chest, while Major Whittlesey’s message hung from her leg, a mirror of a bloody war that lasted four endless years and that took the lives of more than nine million soldiers and between six and thirteen million civilians.
Cher Ami lost her balance and sense of time. Moments later, confused and despite her pain, she flapped her wings and took off again. She traveled approximately thirty kilometers in about half an hour to deliver the message to the command post. A message that revealed the coordinates of the Lost Battalion, which saved the lives of 194 soldiers.
Cher Ami became the heroine of the 77th Infantry Division and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for delivering twelve messages at the Battle of Verdun, which took place from February 21 to December 18, 1916.
The brave carrier pigeon died on June 13, 1919 as a result of war wounds, at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
A symbol of courage during World War I, years later Cher Ami was exhibited in the Homing Pigeon Hall of Fame and also received a gold medal from the American Fanciers’ Organized Organizations.
In any war conflict, the fear of death, pain, loss or the unknown penetrates soldiers and the civilian population. Fear, understood as a distressing disturbance of the mood, paralyzes, but it can also drive us to make quick and brave decisions. Cher Ami, despite the pain, continued flying badly injured.
As Epicurus reminds us, we must put aside all fear of pain, of the gods and of failure, even of death to approach serenity or ataraxia. The philosopher from Samos goes so far as to defend that the fear of death is meaningless. As he writes in Letter to Menoeceus, “Death means nothing to us, because while we live it does not exist, and when it is present we do not exist.”
From their perspective, the fear of death is an irrational or unfounded fear. For him, death, a natural episode of life, does not mean suffering or pain, but simply the absence of sensations, both pleasant and painful. Anxiety about death prevents us from achieving peace of mind. On the contrary, he invites us to accept it.
The fear of pain that comes from the fear of physical and emotional suffering is inevitable, but it can be endured or reduced by the pursuit of moderate pleasures and virtue.
It is difficult to think that Cher Ami overcame fear by a reflex action. It was his survival instinct and his desire to live that overcame him. Faced with the unknown, the best thing for her and also for any human being is to continue fighting for one’s life.
According to Epicurus, if we accept death as part of life and pain as suffering that can be mitigated, we can reach a state of tranquility that helps us overcome any fear.
The Epicurean thought for a calm and placid life is close to that of the Stoics, apparently so distant, that they also advocate a form of ataraxia that they conceive as a radical distancing from passions and all kinds of subjective interest. What prevents us from reading that same message in the flight of a dove?
