THE JUNIOR LEAGUE

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20734, 18 February 1939, Page 21 (Supplement)

THE JUNIOR LEAGUE

Dear Boy? and Girls, For several days I have berii very interested In a bird flying around in the trees of my garden. At times it disappeared and then returned. I am told It I* a rarlng pigeon which has some how lO't its way. a most unusual thing to happen as these birds generally travel very direct to the place from which they have been taken. I wonder If you know that durmsr the r.reat War more than twenty thousand Winged Messengers took part, rarrylntr messages from one part of the battle line to another. At Lille, in France. a beautiful monument has been erected to the memory or those pigeons which lost their lives. There was one very rainous pigeon named “Cher Ami.” This bird saved from certain disaster a whole American battalion. They were cut ofT Trom the main army, and no one seemed to know what had become of them. Cher Ami was

SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. " I will try to make any animal I nave In my care very happy."

J set Tree with a message from the battalion. ! The bird rose among bursting shrapnel which struck it. but still the brave little bird struggled on. When It arrived at its destination its breast bone was broken and one leg had gone. It would almost seem that the bird realised the importance of its Journey, and said “I must get there some how.” perhaps it was that find gave it the necessary strength to complete its mission. IT boys and men thought on these things I Teel sure they would not wantonly destroy a bird. A returned soldier once told me that berore the war he had been very fond or shooting, in Tact Me had been a member of a shooting club, but aTter the war he said he could never atrain point a gun at a pigeon because or the hundreds or men whose lives had been saved by them. Once more, goodbye childTIIMKERBELL