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•David Martin, 74, found the stricken bird when he opened the disused fire place while renovating his Surrey home
•It is thought the pigeon may have stopped on the chimney and become overcome with fumes
•Experts believe the pigeon may have been flying back to General Montgomery Headquarters in Reigate, Surrey or Bletchley Park, Bucks
By David Wilkes
PUBLISHED: 07:21 EST, 1 November 2012 | UPDATED: 21:14 EST, 1 November 2012
He had survived the perilous flight back from Nazi-occupied territory hundreds of miles away.
Exhausted, the British ‘spy’ pigeon swooped down on a chimney in Surrey for a rest.
And there, sadly, he fell off his perch. Perhaps overcome by fumes from the fire below, he died – with a vital coded message in a tiny capsule still strapped to his leg.
Shock: David Martin with the remains of a carrier pigeon which he discovered behind his fireplace
His remains lay undiscovered in the chimney for around 70 years until the home’s current owner David Martin recently decided to restore the fireplace.
‘The chimney was full of twigs and rubbish,’ he said yesterday. ‘We were stunned by how much came out. Then I started finding bits of a dead pigeon. We thought it might be a racing pigeon until we spotted the red capsule.’
The former probation officer and his wife Anne, both 74, unscrewed the capsule and found a hand-written message inside on a ‘cigarette paper thin’ piece of paper.
It has been sent to code breakers at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, the intelligence centre where work to crack the Nazi Enigma code shortened the war by years, and to their modern-day counterparts at GCHQ in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, who also are trying to decipher it.
•It is thought the pigeon may have stopped on the chimney and become overcome with fumes
•Experts believe the pigeon may have been flying back to General Montgomery Headquarters in Reigate, Surrey or Bletchley Park, Bucks
By David Wilkes
PUBLISHED: 07:21 EST, 1 November 2012 | UPDATED: 21:14 EST, 1 November 2012
He had survived the perilous flight back from Nazi-occupied territory hundreds of miles away.
Exhausted, the British ‘spy’ pigeon swooped down on a chimney in Surrey for a rest.
And there, sadly, he fell off his perch. Perhaps overcome by fumes from the fire below, he died – with a vital coded message in a tiny capsule still strapped to his leg.
Shock: David Martin with the remains of a carrier pigeon which he discovered behind his fireplace
His remains lay undiscovered in the chimney for around 70 years until the home’s current owner David Martin recently decided to restore the fireplace.
‘The chimney was full of twigs and rubbish,’ he said yesterday. ‘We were stunned by how much came out. Then I started finding bits of a dead pigeon. We thought it might be a racing pigeon until we spotted the red capsule.’
The former probation officer and his wife Anne, both 74, unscrewed the capsule and found a hand-written message inside on a ‘cigarette paper thin’ piece of paper.
It has been sent to code breakers at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, the intelligence centre where work to crack the Nazi Enigma code shortened the war by years, and to their modern-day counterparts at GCHQ in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, who also are trying to decipher it.
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