(new) Pigeons of War

[Vasa]

Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm a member of Distributed Proofreaders, a world-wide group of volunteers dedicated to preserving all written documents as part of humanity's common heritage. I'm also a bird breeder; the Vasa being my especial concern. This bird, the most ancestrial parrot, is also the closest relative to the hookbills' nearest relations- pigeons. So I'll admit to knowing something about them, too.

I was recently talking about the exploits of pigeons in wartime: Mary (wounded in action 22 times; killed in action; body retrieved from the battlefield and buried with full military honours), Cher Ami, G.I. Joe, the Mocker (wounded after 52 missions with part of his cranium blown away, but lived until 1938), 10601 (19 successful submarine-launched missions; intercepted and killed by an Axis-deployed hawk), The Kaiser (lived 32 years!), Snow White- many more; and folk were quite interested. One of the content providers asked me if I could recommend any pigeon books- preferably dealing with war birds, which we could process into our libraries. These works must be in the Public Domain, which means at least 50 years old (no limit on government publications.)

I'd appreciate it if anyone could offer any suggestions. We can trace down just about any book, in any language; so the book title(s) (and author and publisher, if known) is all we need.

Thanks for any help,

Vasa (for Distributed Proofreaders)
"Preserving History, One Page at a Time"