A British carrier pigeon was en route to deliver a coded message during World War II when it apparently fell down a chimney. The current owner of the chimney, David Martin of Surrey, England, found the bones of that pigeon 70 years later, with the message still attached to his leg.
Experts say the red capsule Mr Martin found is the type used by the Special Operations Executive. Their human agents undertook sabotage missions such as blowing up trains, bridges and factories in German-occupied territory.
The message was written by a Sergeant W Stott and contains columns of groups of five letters. It is thought that its intended recipient, ‘X02’, is code for Bomber Command.
One theory is that the message may have been requesting a bombing raid somewhere. Another is that the pigeon was bound for Field Marshal Montgomery’s HQ in Reigate, Surrey, from where he planned the D-Day landings.
Because the message is in code, it is assumed that the pigeon flew back to England from Nazi-occupied Europe. The code has been sent to the government intelligence center that worked to crack the Nazi Enigma code during the war. Link -via Metafilter