Operation Columba-The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe

by Gordon Corera Narrated by Derek Perkins

Overview

The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II.

Between 1941 and 1944, British intelligence dropped sixteen thousand homing pigeons in an arc across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Bordeaux, France to Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of a spy operation code-named Columba. Returning to MI14, the secret government branch in charge of the ""Special Pigeon Service,"" the birds carried messages that offered a glimpse of life under the Germans in rural France, Holland, and Belgium. Written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the birds' legs, these messages were sometimes comic, often tragic, and occasionally invaluable-reporting details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar systems, and even the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets used to terrorize London.

The people who sent these messages were not trained spies. They were ordinary men and women willing to risk their lives in the name of freedom, including the ""Leopold Vindictive"" network-a small group of Belgian villagers led by an extraordinary priest named Joseph Raskin. The intelligence Raskin sent back by pigeon proved so valuable that it reached Churchill and MI6 parachuted agents behind enemy lines to assist him.

Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A powerful tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

WWII spycraft may be best remembered for ingenious bits of technology, but an extrememly low-tech strategy also played an important role in the Allied victory. Derek Perkins ably narrates this audiobook about Great Britain’s use of homing pigeons to communicate with resistance cells and Allied agents in Belgium. Perkins’s British accent adds a pleasurable air of authenticity to his reading. He handles the names of people and places well, keeping the narrative flowing. But he can’t overcome the author’s overly detailed prose. There are so many people involved that it can be difficult to keep them straight. Also, the author’s complex sentence structure occasionally makes it difficult for listeners to discern the primary point. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

08/20/2018
Corera (Intercept: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking and Digital Espionage), a security correspondent for BBC News, unearths the intriguing story of the homing pigeon service used by British intelligence during WWII to communicate with the Resistance in occupied Europe. MI14 dropped more than 16,000 pigeons “in an arc” from Copenhagen to Bordeaux. The messages the pigeons brought back, written on sheets of rice paper and folded into canisters clipped on their legs by ordinary men and women living under German occupation, provided valuable information on everything from German morale to troop movements. Witty and meticulously researched, Corera’s narrative highlights the story of a small Belgian resistance cell led by Catholic priest Joseph Raskin, who provided Operation Columba with such superior intelligence that two agents were parachuted in to help him, contributing to dire consequences for the whole group. He vividly describes the rivalries and lack of coordination among British intelligence branches, the memorable “array of oddballs and professors” who made up MI14, the network of resistance members and trained agents in the occupied territories, and the German spies who penetrated their cells. Corera succeeds in bringing a virtually unknown chapter of the war to life and pays tribute to the ordinary people who risked their lives to resist the Nazis. (Oct.)

Nicholas Reynolds

[An] amazing story of the secret pigeon service and how it helped to win the war. Well-researched and well-told, as much about humans as pigeons, it is replete with eccentric Englishmen, ruthless Nazis, and brave resisters in occupied Europe who risk their lives for the Allied cause.

Daily Mail (UK)

Once you’ve read this book you’ll never look at a pigeon disdainfully again … No Frederick Forsyth thriller could be as gripping as this real-life story… Corera’s gripping book is an intoxicating mixture of comedy and high seriousness.

Daily Telegraph (London)

Corera is to be congratulated for bringing to light, with humour and verve, a virtually unknown chapter of the war.

Sunday Times (London)

[An] extraordinary, colourful and moving story… [A] thrilling tale.

Booklist

The eccentric idea of enlisting pigeons as spies, combined with the bravery of those in occupied Europe who picked them up, vividly animates Corera’s excellent addition to the annals of WWII espionage.

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

WWII spycraft may be best remembered for ingenious bits of technology, but an extrememly low-tech strategy also played an important role in the Allied victory. Derek Perkins ably narrates this audiobook about Great Britain’s use of homing pigeons to communicate with resistance cells and Allied agents in Belgium. Perkins’s British accent adds a pleasurable air of authenticity to his reading. He handles the names of people and places well, keeping the narrative flowing. But he can’t overcome the author’s overly detailed prose. There are so many people involved that it can be difficult to keep them straight. Also, the author’s complex sentence structure occasionally makes it difficult for listeners to discern the primary point. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2018-07-31

The war in Europe takes to the skies—on the wings of birds.

Courier pigeons are the stuff of World War I set pieces, but they were still useful two decades later. As BBC security correspondent Corera (Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage, 2016, etc.) writes, "in 2011, Chinese state media announced that a special unit of the People's Liberation Army was training pigeons to conduct ‘special military missions.'" In this lively story, the author focuses closely on a British operation called Operation Columba, which seeded mostly rural areas of occupied Western Europe with more than 16,000 homing pigeons. Some of the birds returned to British hands with accounts of life under Nazi rule, while others brought more substantial news of gun positions, troop movements, and the like. One principal was a chaplain to Belgium's King Leopold, organizing a cell of pigeon fanciers dubbed Leopold Vindictive that caused the Nazis fits. Corera is a touch too generous with the details of just how the birds did their work; one page he devotes to a pigeon's transit could be distilled to a couple of sentences. Still, there's undeniable drama in these pages, not just for the birds, the targets for German snipers' rifles and hungry hawks alike, but also for the groups of Resistance fighters who took part in Columba and, through the diligence of Belgian collaborators and Nazi officials (among them was a lawyer who "had been instrumental in taking National Socialist ideology and expressing it in the form of laws and decrees"), sometimes paid with their lives. Among the highlights of the narrative are Winston Churchill's personal intervention in the program and the author's good-natured, sometimes-wry approach to the material: "If the Nazis came through your door," he writes, "you might be able to explain away a pigeon but not a radio transmitter." Throughout, he offers reminders of how dangerous the enterprise was and how difficult the odds were: Of those 16,000 birds, only 10 percent survived.

A capable, readable look at a little-known corner of history.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173405357
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos