Mary of Exeter Animal Hero
The PDSA DICKENS MEDAL- recognised as the animals’ Victoria Cross – was named after Maria Dickin, the founder of the PDSA, formerly known as the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animalss (PDSA).
Between 1943 and 1949, 54 animals received the medal, including 32 pigeons, 18 dogs and 3 horses. The following is about a pigeon Mary of Exeter;
If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? How do you know if it does or not? Just like the tree the story you are about to read is in its nature very similar to the tree falling in the forest.
The story you are about to read is as true as possible, there is no way to explain it except to give you the facts and allow you to determine the truth, this is a life and death struggle to survive that it makes one wonder why there never was a movie made to portray these unusual hero’s, when you read their encounters with death and the struggle to stay alive and continue on their mission without fail one wonders at the courage of the Pigeon, that’s right the lowly pigeon, these hero’s from WWI and WWII, our story is about a courageous Pigeon named Mary of Exeter, so famous she was awarded the Dickens Medal.
Here is the story of one very famous and very brave war Pigeon. This amazing story is but on of dozens of Pigeons that served in both WWI and WWII fighting to return home no matter the cost, some wounded mortally and others killed in action.. Many Pigeons were shot, caught between cross fires and hunted down by the infamous Hitler’s Falcon Brigades! So here we have a pictureof a brave Pigeon that was on a mission, let me take you back to the day of the flight, the British had intelligence agents throughout Europe, many were the famous 00 agents as seen in Ian Flemings 007 series this was 009 who had information about a convoy of Nazi troops and supplies headed for North Africa and it was urgent as needed to get this information to Allied Headquarters in London and fast, the Pigeon keeper in Germany told 009 he would translate the message and send it by midnight on his best Pigeon Mary of Exeter. So after he coded the message he sent Mary at midnight hoping she would arrive in London by early am at Allied headquarters, as Mary flew toward England Hitler’s coast watchers with their trusty Falcons kept a sharp eye out for Pigeons, and sure enough one of the coastal watchers saw in the moonlight a Pigeon and knew this was an allied Pigeon on a mission, so he sent his Falcon up to catch the Pigeon it should be noted that the Falcon travels at 60 miles per hour and so does a good Pigeon so how does he over take a pigeon?
The Falcon goes up about a mile and the pigeon is only about 150 feet above the water, the only defense a pigeon has is its eyes as they can see above and behind as they are crucial to their survival and as the Falcon went up and got into postilion the Falcon dived and as it did Mary moved to the right swiftly and the Falcon scored a serious gash along Mary’s side and went back up in the air to attack again!
Once again the Falcon went into a dive and scored another serious cut along Mary’s side as the Pigeon was moving out along the ocean to far for the Falcon as Falcons need to land occasionally and are not long range birds like pigeons, it turned and headed back as Mary continued at 60 plus miles per hours on her mission to Allied Headquarters where she arrived at 8am her handler in London observed her cuts and gave her 22 stitches which is the equivalent to a 200 pound man receiving 4,000 stitches, incredible is all I can say, the message was delivered and Mary was saved by her handler and the allies stopped another shipment of arms to the Axis troops in North Africa, hooray for the good guys!!!
Plus a job well done “Mary of Exeter” we have to say that because there was another Pigeon named Mary who was also a hero, I will write about a number of other animal hero’s, hurray for Mary of Exeter and may she live in Pigeon heaven in comfort!
