Bletchingley, Surrey, UK. During renovations by his homeowner, 74-year-old David Martin discovered the skeleton of a pigeon with a small red cylinder containing a coded message. The dispatch wasn’t immediately translated by the British intelligence services, but a Canadian who inherited an old Royal Artillery manual managed to do so. The message read: “Jerrys [that’s the Germans] troops, tanks, artillery, engineers, here. Countermeasures against tanks fail.” The message dates back to Normandy, the day of the landings: June 6, 1944. British paratrooper William Scott, 27, advanced behind enemy lines and entrusted a carrier pigeon with his mission accomplished message. The coded message contained 27 groups of words and began with “AOKN HVPKD FNFJW FNFJW… and so on.
