Esther Chilton

If you’d like to be included in this slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.

This week’s guest is a regular in this spot. Murray Clarke is back with another super story for us:

The Chosen Few

By

Murray Clarke

WORLD WAR TWO 1944: Imagine the honour and pride I felt when I first learnt I’d been selected for a covert “Special Military Operation”!

Competition had been very fierce, with dozens of other applicants considered for this prestigious and dangerous assignment.

Prior to the mission, I underwent extensive training to help me achieve a high level of fitness. After all, I’d be flying a long way. I was also fed extra rations to build up my strength.

I must admit to feeling apprehensive. So much could go wrong. So many had failed before me.

At the time, radio communications with our troops in Europe were difficult, and prone to interception by the German army. Top Secret messages were therefore conveyed in person by nominated carriers.

This is where I came in. The cunning plan was for me to be flown out to France with one of the parachute regiments, and dropped behind enemy lines under cover of darkness. I would then be given Highly Confidential information to take back and be analysed by the intelligence officers at MI6. The results could help determine the outcome of the war.

The return journey to Blighty would be the trickiest part of the whole operation. The ever-vigilant German gunners, on the lookout for anything flying in the sky, would try their utmost to shoot me down.

And so, after a day’s delay due to bad weather, at 0130, in the early hours of June 6^th, I joined twenty paratroopers, brave men and true, aboard a Douglas twin-engine C-47 cargo plane, and we took off from an airfield somewhere in East Devon. Their pale faces had been camouflaged with cocoa, and they carried a variety of equipment to aid their mission, including knives, hand grenades, rubber dinghies, spades and coils of rope.

Soon, the south coast of England loomed ahead. Flying low, we crossed the English Channel, and, dodging the barrage of anti-aircraft fire, passed over the coast of France and headed for Normandy.

I had been strapped onto the chest of one of the highly-trained paratroopers by a specially-designed harness – ready to be parachuted behind the German trenches. A metal canister was attached to one of my legs, into which the secret notes, written on scrolls of paper, would be placed by our commanders in the battlefield.

At 0400, just before dawn, we jumped out of the aircraft into the inky-black sky.

An hour later, having landed without incident, the messages, stamped “Top Secret”, were securely fastened to my leg, and I took off – this time flying solo, on my return journey to England. I hadn’t travelled far before the Jerry artillery spotted me. A barrage of shells hurtled through the sky towards me. I ducked and dived as best I could, trying to avoid the flak and machine-gun fire.

Suddenly, a stray bullet hit my left wing. Horrified, I thought I was a goner! But, somehow, I managed to fly on, regardless.

Thankfully, in spite of my damaged wing, I returned in one piece, and received a hero’s welcome. I’d done it! I was given urgent medical attention and soon made a full recovery.

Only later, did I learn that June 6^th 1944 was, in fact, D-Day (codename Operation Overlord). Over 150,000 allied troops were landed on the beaches of Normandy, supported by 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft – the start of the campaign to liberate German-occupied Western Europe.

And I had played my part! Mission accomplished.

Soon afterwards, I was awarded The Dickin Medal – the equivalent of the Victoria Cross, by the PDSA (that’s the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals).

Oh! I’m sorry – didn’t I make myself clear? My name is Percy. I am an animal – a bird . . . a homing pigeon! Also known as a CARRIER PIGEON.

FOOTNOTE: Between 1943 and 1949, the Dickin Medal was awarded to 32 pigeons, 18 dogs, 3 horses and a ship’s cat – to acknowledge actions of “gallantry or devotion” during the Second World War.

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Image credit: Quotesgram