Paddy

He was bred in Carnlough, County Antrim, by Andrew Hughes, and requisitioned like thousands of racing pigeons for the RAF's National Pigeon Service. He trained in England and was among the birds taken to Normandy with the invasion force in June 1944, to carry situation reports back under the wireless blackout imposed for the landings. He was released in Normandy on 12 June and reached his loft in Hampshire four hours and fifty minutes later — about two hundred and thirty miles, the fastest crossing recorded of any of the pigeons sent home from the beachheads. The Germans kept falcons on the French coast for the specific purpose of killing message birds, and the weather that day was against him. He was awarded the Dickin Medal on 1 September 1944 for the best recorded time with a message from Normandy, the only bird bred in Ireland to receive it. He went home to Carnlough after the war and died there in 1954.

Honours

• 1944Fastest recorded crossing from Normandy: 230 miles in 4 hours 50 minutes, 12 June
• · Flew past the falcons German forces kept on the French coast to kill message pigeons
• 1944Dickin Medal, 1 September — the only bird bred in Ireland to receive it

Their kind

Selectively bred from the rock dove for the instinct to return, and raced for centuries before armies used it — a trained bird navigates home from hundreds of miles away by a sense we still argue about.

A life in seasons