The very first rays of the dawning sun emerged over the sunken valley, awakening the inhabitants that nestled in its midst and turning the sky a rosy hue. As the thin mantle of light spread slowly over the land, the German forces doused their camp fires, one by one in painfully obvious succession, as if to mark the final countdown to an inevitable conquest.

Surrounded and downcast, the small throng of British survivors readied themselves for another day of fatalities, misery and anguish. The only thought that kept them from the brink of despair was the ceaseless yet hollow promises from their General, of aid arriving any day now. What hr failed to mention was that he had neither informed nor the means to inform any such aid, but he dared not tell his troops that. It was this sole belief that kept them from simply lying down and succumbing. But the General had one last aspiration.

And so it was that as the first gunshots were exchanged that General Robert Tulip trudged through the near vacant campsite towards the lofts, formerly home to five hundred and forty of the swiftest assortment of homing pigeons known to man-kind, currently the dwelling of one.

Outside the rickety old shed, the former Major John Gibbs, sat on a low wooden stool. He sat because he could do nothing else, for in the heat of battle not two weeks ago he had lost his leg in a shelling. In this time his world had changed. His once clean shaven face was in dire need of a razor, and his former immaculate uniform was stained with blotches of tea in several places.

Now as Tulip approached the sorry sight he saw that once again in the ex-majors scarred old hands sat the last of the five hundred and forty royal homing pigeons that arrived little over a month ago. “John, John, it’s time”

Robert muttered slowly as if talking to a child. Mr Gibbs hadn’t been quite himself lately.

The cripple sighed and sat up bringing the grey bundle of feathers closer to his face.”In these few short weeks I lost my entirety” John looked up smiling slightly, “I’ve seen my friends fall in battle beside me, and grown men, whom I respected, were made to look like bawling children in front of those devils.” He shuddered, indicating over the hillside.

“And the only other person who’s ever understood that is this bird, the only other living casualty of this baleful onslaught” He loosened his hold on the pigeon to reveal the stump where a small wrinkly leg should have been. The pigeon began cooing softly, his beady eyes were almost mournful. “Now fly straight my crippled friend” John whispered, inserting the minute piece of paper into the canister on the pigeon’s leg, “and may your instinct guide you”.

An hour later the British soldiers heard the buzzing of propellers nearing over the horizon, and cheered.