For starters, Cher Ami had been misgendered all her life as a male bird and it was only after they taxidermied her body to install her in the Smithsonian that they discovered her to be a female pigeon. History 100 Years On, The 'Hello Girls' Are Recognized For World War I Heroicsįalling down that initial Wikipedia rabbit hole - well before I dug into my more deep and serious research - the resonances between these two unlikely heroes of the Lost Battalion were undeniable. I wanted to bring the two of them and their triumphs and tragedies back into the light in the 21st century. Both she and Major Charles Whittlesey (a person you are bound to stumble upon, too, if you're researching Cher Ami) fit that bill. 'As a fiction writer, I'm drawn to historical incidents and figures that were stunningly well-known in their day but that have since been forgotten.

'The instant that I landed on Cher Ami's Wikipedia page, I could see that she was not merely a remarkable pigeon and World War I hero, but also that she would make an incredibly complex and unique protagonist for a novel,' Rooney says. Rooney teaches writing at DePaul university in Chicago she says a student's poem mentioned Cher Ami in passing, moving her to look up the story. It honors creatures from elephants to glow worms, who served alongside humans in war as the memorial says, 'they had no choice.'Īt the head of the animal parade carved on the wall fly three birds - I like to think they're homing pigeons like Cher Ami, the real-life bird who, though terribly wounded by German guns, carried the message that helped save a trapped battalion in World War I.Ĭher Ami (who was a hen, despite her masculine name) is the inspiration for Kathleen Rooney's novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, which imagines the parallel lives of both the pigeon and the commander of what became known as the Lost Battalion. In London's Hyde Park, there's a heartbreaking series of sculptures called the Animals in War Memorial - heavily laden bronze donkeys struggling through a gap in an enormous curved wall.

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