The National Pigeon Service (NPS) was a volunteer civilian organisation formed in Britain in 1938 as result of representations made to the Committee of Imperial Defence and the British Government by Major W.H.Osman. During 1939-45 over 200,000 young pigeons were given to the services by the British pigeon breeders of the NPS. The birds were used by the Royal Air Force and the Army and Intelligence Services, Special Section of the Army Pigeon Service (which was formed in World War I by Lt. Col. A.H.Osman). During three and a half years of World War II, 16,554 war pigeons were parachuted onto the continent. One of these was Commando a red chequer cock bird that became a recipient of the Dickin Medal.
Read more about National Pigeon Service: Canister Color Code, Pigeon NURP 40 TW 194
Famous quotes containing the words national, pigeon and/or service:
“[D]rilling and arming, when carried on on a national scale, excite whole populations to frenzies which end in war.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)