A dear friend shared this documentary "War of the Birds" which includes
some rather interesting stories on pigeons used in World War II. This
led me to revisit something that I had come across in the past rather
briefly. There was an Indian Pigeon Service which was part of the Signal
Corps which was active towards the 1940s. Rather little has been
written about them - although there was a manual that is unfortunately
not available in online archives "Indian Pigeon Service. A manual of
instruction on the use of homing
pigeons in India and South East Asia. Booklet, Feb 1945 - published by
the Chief of the General Staff, Delhi, Feb 1945"- and some letters have been reproduced here and here.
But this makes another bit even more surprising - there were attempts much earlier on introducing homing pigeons in the army and those early experiments were done in Bangalore by the 19th Hussars who set up something called the Assaye Flying Club, a report on which was made in the Lincolnshire Echo of 13 December 1894!
Perhaps someone with access to army archives can find more.
- 1945 notice on rescinding Defence of India Rule 19A which restricted homing and racing pigeons - https://www.abhilekh-patal.in/jspui/handle/123456789/2717279
- PS: Varun Khanna sent me this very interesting link.
