WWII Pigeon Handler Dies

[TAWhatley]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/us...=pigeon&st=cse

New York Times
Richard Topus, a Pigeon Trainer in World War II, Dies at 84
By MARGALIT FOX

Published: December 13, 2008


In January 1942, barely a month after Pearl Harbor, the United States
War Department sounded a call to enlist. It wasn’t men they wanted —
not this time. The Army was looking for pigeons.


To the thousands of American men and boys who raced homing pigeons, a
popular sport in the early 20th century and afterward, the government’s
message was clear: Uncle Sam Wants Your Birds.


Richard Topus was one of those boys. He had no birds of his own to
give, but he had another, unassailable asset: he was from Brooklyn,
where pigeon racing had long held the status of a secular religion. His
already vast experience with pigeons — long, ardent hours spent tending
and racing them after school and on weekends — qualified him, when he
was still a teenager, to train American spies and other military
personnel in the swift, silent use of the birds in wartime.


World War II saw the last wide-scale use of pigeons as agents of combat
intelligence. Mr. Topus, just 18 when he enlisted in the Army, was
among the last of the several thousand pigeoneers, as military handlers
of the birds were known, who served the United States in the war.


A lifelong pigeon enthusiast who became a successful executive in the
food industry, Mr. Topus died on Dec. 5 in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the
age of 84. The cause was kidney failure, his son Andrew said.


Richard Topus was born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1924, the son of
Russian Jewish immigrants. Growing up in Flatbush, he fell in love with
the pigeons his neighbors kept on their rooftops in spacious coops
known as lofts. His parents would not let him have a loft of his own —
they feared it would interfere with schoolwork, Andrew Topus said — but
he befriended several local men who taught him to handle their birds.
Two of them had been pigeoneers in World War I, when the United States
Army Pigeon Service was formally established.


Pigeons have been used as wartime messengers at least since antiquity.
Before the advent of radio communications, the birds were routinely
used as airborne couriers, carrying messages in tiny capsules strapped
to their legs. A homing pigeon can find its way back to its loft from
nearly a thousand miles away. Over short distances, it can fly a mile a
minute. It can go where human couriers often cannot, flying over rough
terrain and behind enemy lines.


By the early 20th century, advances in communications technology seemed
to herald the end of combat pigeoneering. In 1903, a headline in The
New York Times confidently declared, “No Further Need of Army Pigeons:
They Have Been Superseded by the Adoption of Wireless Telegraph
Systems.”


But technology, the Army discovered, has its drawbacks. Radio
transmissions can be intercepted. Triangulated, they can reveal the
sender’s location. In World War I, pigeons proved their continued
usefulness in times of enforced radio silence. After the United States
entered World War II, the Army put out the call for birds to racing
clubs nationwide. Tens of thousands were donated.


In all, more than 50,000 pigeons served the United States in the war.
Many were shot down. Others were set upon by falcons released by the
Nazis to intercept them. (The British countered by releasing their own
falcons to pursue German messenger pigeons. But since falcons found
Allied and Axis birds equally delicious, their deployment as defensive
weapons was soon abandoned by both sides.)


But many American pigeons did reach their destinations safely, relaying
vital messages from soldiers in the field to Allied commanders. The
information they carried — including reports on troop movements and
tiny hand-sketched maps — has been widely credited with saving
thousands of lives during the war.


Mr. Topus enlisted in early 1942 and was assigned to the Army Signal
Corps, which included the Pigeon Service. He was eventually stationed
at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, one of several installations around the
country at which Army pigeons were raised and trained. There, he joined
a small group of pigeoneers, not much bigger than a dozen men.


Camp Ritchie specialized in intelligence training, and Mr. Topus and
his colleagues schooled men and birds in the art of war. They taught
the men to feed and care for the birds; to fasten on the tiny capsules
containing messages written on lightweight paper; to drop pigeons from
airplanes; and to jump out of airplanes themselves, with pigeons tucked
against their chests. The Army had the Maidenform Brassiere Company
make paratroopers’ vests with special pigeon pockets.


The birds, for their part, were trained to fly back to lofts whose
locations were changed constantly. This skill was crucial: once the
pigeons were released by troops in Europe, the Pacific or another
theater, they would need to fly back to mobile combat lofts in those
places rather than light out for the United States. Mr. Topus and his
colleagues also bred pigeons, seeking optimal combinations of speed and
endurance.


After the war, Mr. Topus earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
business from Hofstra University. While he was a student, he earned
money selling eggs — chicken eggs — door to door and afterward started
a wholesale egg business. In the late 1950s, Mr. Topus became the first
salesman at Friendship Food Products, a dairy company then based in
Maspeth, Queens; he retired as executive vice president for sales and
marketing. (The company, today based in Jericho, N.Y. and a subsidiary
of Dean Foods, is now known as Friendship Dairies.)


In the 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Topus taught marketing at Hofstra; the
C. W. Post campus of Long Island University; and the State University
of New York, Farmingdale, where he started a management-training
program for supermarket professionals. In later years, after retiring
to Scottsdale, he taught at Arizona State University and was also a
securities arbitrator, hearing disputes between stockbrokers and their
clients.


Besides his son Andrew, of Chicago, Mr. Topus is survived by his wife,
the former Jacqueline Buehler, whom he married in 1948; two other
children, Nina Davis of Newton, Mass.; and David, of Atlanta; and four
grandchildren.


Though the Army phased out pigeons in the late 1950s, Mr. Topus raced
them avidly till nearly the end of his life. He left a covert, enduring
legacy of his hobby at Friendship, for which he oversaw the design of
the highly recognizable company logo, a graceful bird in flight, in the
early 1960s.


From that day to this, the bird has adorned cartons of the company’s
cottage cheese, sour cream, buttermilk and other products. To legions
of unsuspecting consumers, Andrew Topus said last week, the bird looks
like a dove. But to anyone who really knew his father, it is a pigeon,
plain as day.

[mr squeaks]

WOW! What a great story and wonderful tribute to a man and his pigeons!

Thank you for posting, Terry!

Love and Hugs

Shi

[Pegasus]

He is one remarkable man...No one knew the pigeoneers until they are gone...I like reading about wartime heroes...I salute him for what he did...

[Maggie-NC]

What an absolutely wonderful story, Terry. That is so cool that his company's logo was a pigeon. This type article can only help in showing how great pigeons are.

Many thanks for sharing.

[TerriB]

What an interesting piece of history. Thanks for sharing!

[TAWhatley]

http://www.friendshipdairies.com/index.php

Terry

[risingstarfans]

Several well known pigeon fanciers were veterans of both world wars in the pigeon service, and unfortunately there are almost none left today.

I could name several off the top of my head, but their names wouldn't mean much to the younger generations of today. Safe to say, though, that the name Wendell M. Levi is well known to all who raise pigeons, having written THE PIGEON, and he was a pigeoneer in WWI.

[maine123]

I always like to hear stories of pigeons in WWII and their handlers. THanks for sharing.

[dovetail]

What A Great Story. I Wonder How Many Ignorant People Who Consider Pigeons As Flying Rats Know What A Noble Animal They Really Are. Thank You For This.

[Teresa]

Really enjoyed reading this tribute, thanks for sharing.