Cher Ami Art Print, The Lost Battalion 1918, Vintage Black and White Wall Art

Forty kilometres, shot through the chest. In October 1918 around five hundred American soldiers were cut off in the Argonne forest, surrounded, and then shelled by their own artillery, which did not know where they were.

Two pigeons carrying the coordinates were shot down. The third was Cher Ami. She was hit in the chest, blinded in one eye, and left with a leg hanging by a tendon. She flew roughly forty kilometres to divisional headquarters with the message capsule still attached to what was left of that leg.

The shelling stopped. Fewer than two hundred men walked out of those woods, and they walked out because a wounded bird did not land.

Stories worth passing on, not just remembering.