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Books I am currently reading: Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre. Spies + history = catnip for me anyway, but it's very engagingly written and I'm really enjoying it.
Popular image of spying: glamorous, competent people sipping martinis and seducing sexy enemy agents.
Actual spying: an equal blend of bureaucracy and crazy people.
At some point I need to transcribe or scan the book's section(s) on pigeons, because the pigeon stuff is AMAZING. It involves MI5 agent Richard Melville Walker ("He adored pigeons. He lived for pigeons. His reports were long, cooing poems of love.") who was convinced that Germany was going to smuggle intelligence out of the country with homing pigeons, despite the total lack of evidence for this, and deployed a series of anti-pigeon countermeasures, such as a brigade of trained falcons that only managed to succeed in taking down British pigeons ("friendly fire," the book comments dryly) and attempted pigeon double agents that quietly went native in French pigeon coops. A few choice bits are quoted here.
The "what happened to everyone after the war" chapter includes the following for Gustav the pigeon, who carried invasion news from the Normandy beach front and is the only war pigeon named in the book:
Apparently Gustav was also awarded the Dickin Medal, the UK's distinguished service award for animals.
Popular image of spying: glamorous, competent people sipping martinis and seducing sexy enemy agents.
Actual spying: an equal blend of bureaucracy and crazy people.
At some point I need to transcribe or scan the book's section(s) on pigeons, because the pigeon stuff is AMAZING. It involves MI5 agent Richard Melville Walker ("He adored pigeons. He lived for pigeons. His reports were long, cooing poems of love.") who was convinced that Germany was going to smuggle intelligence out of the country with homing pigeons, despite the total lack of evidence for this, and deployed a series of anti-pigeon countermeasures, such as a brigade of trained falcons that only managed to succeed in taking down British pigeons ("friendly fire," the book comments dryly) and attempted pigeon double agents that quietly went native in French pigeon coops. A few choice bits are quoted here.
The "what happened to everyone after the war" chapter includes the following for Gustav the pigeon, who carried invasion news from the Normandy beach front and is the only war pigeon named in the book:
Gustav died soon after the war when his breeder trod on him while mucking out his loft.
Apparently Gustav was also awarded the Dickin Medal, the UK's distinguished service award for animals.