...the French Defense Ministry still operates a military dovecote—Europe's last—with 150 birds drafted into the 8th regiment for communication and transmission. The birds reside at the Mont-Valérien fortress in Suresnes, to the west of Paris. While a corporal sees to their upkeep and training, they are not ranked as a strategic asset.
"That's a big mistake," says Mr. Decool, who visits the birds at their home near a pigeon-post museum dedicated to the history of the winged servants.
"...a nuclear catastrophe, a hurricane, a war—where racing homers would be the last-resort messaging network. In the Syrian city of Homs, insurgents defying the regime of President Bashar al-Assad are relying on carrier pigeons to communicate because their walkie-talkies are out of reach", he says.
"Where modernity stops, pigeons can still go through," Mr. Decool says.
In July, the 60-year-old sent French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian a letter asking him to clarify France's carrier-pigeon strategy. Two weeks later, the response arrived in the mail.
The minister said that French forces were equipped with self-sufficient communications systems that could resist power failure, cyber or electromagnetic attacks. Should France face a real need for carrier pigeons, the minister said, it could rely on "the precious support" of the country's pigeon fanciers—a flock of folks he estimates to number about 20,000.
Last year, Mr. Decool became concerned that France could be outdone in carrier-pigeon expertise by China, which maintains a platoon of 50,000 birds with 1,100 trainers for communication in border and coastal areas, according to the Chinese Ministry of National Defense.
But a plan to hatch ideas with the Chinese landed on deaf ears. Then-French Defense Minister Gérard Longuet said the country couldn't stoop to such tactics. In response, he said there was a risk Chinese pigeons would "carry French messages back to China!"
...
In 1870, when the Prussian army put Paris under siege, the prefect of the Nord region had 1,500 pigeons shipped to the capital to keep up the communication with the northern towns of Roubaix and Tourcoing.
Parisians, in turn, sent hot-air balloons loaded with their own pigeons to other cities, so that the besieged capital could receive a steady flow of news from the rest of the country.
When World War I broke out, the French army could count on 15,000 fully trained carrier pigeons, securing a direct communication line between Paris, Lyon and the eastern outposts.
One bird rose to be one of the war's most revered heroes. Surrounded by German enemies in Verdun, a French commander managed to telegraph by pigeon that his garrison was facing a poison-gas attack.
"This is my last pigeon," the message said.
The bird, Le Vaillant, skipped German bullets and flew through toxic clouds, back to its dovecote, helping save 100 lives. At the end of the war, he was decorated with the Cross of War, a distinction reserved for French war heroes.
(couldn't identify the fixed wings one, too fast)
