Mary of Exeter - DM 32
Date of Award: November 1945
"For outstanding endurance on War Service in spite of wounds."
Mary of Exeter's Story
Espionage has always gone hand in hand with conflict. During World War II, carrier pigeons were crucial weapons in the spy's armoury and few distinguished themselves more notably than the 'Indestructible Pigeon', Mary of Exeter, (Pigeon No, NURP 40. WCE 249).
Owned by bootmaker and pigeon breeder Cecil 'Charlie' Brewer, Mary of Exeter joined the National Pigeon Service in the 1940s. Her role was to provide critical intelligence to the Allies by delivering top secret messages from behind enemy lines.
Mary of Exeter completed four successful missions from France and, remarkably, managed to survive three German attempts to stop her delivering essential intelligence. Returning home from one mission, she was found to have suffered wounds to her neck and breast. The enemy kept specially trained hawks to attack carrier pigeons and she managed to make it through despite a hawk attack.
Having recovered from her injuries, she returned to action two months later. Hawks were not the only method used to stop pigeons - they would shoot them as well. She returned from that mission with a missing wing tip and three shotgun pellets in her body. Nursed back to health by her owner, she once again returned to action following test flights.
On her final mission, Mary of Exeter made it home with not just a vital message, but shrapnel injuries to her neck. The neck injury was so severe that Charlie Brewer had to make a bespoke collar to help hold her head up and she was officially retired from service.
If that wasn’t remarkable enough, while recuperating and enjoying her retirement her loft was bombed by the Luftwaffe. Many pigeons perished, but Mary survived.
She was awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal in 1945. Her citation read: “For outstanding endurance on War Service in spite of wounds.”
Unsurprisingly, her story captured the world’s imagination and in 2018 the Exeter Civic Society unveiled a Blue Plaque in her honour at the site of Charlie Brewer’s pigeon loft. The first of its kind in the UK, it celebrates the ‘partnership of a heroic animal and its owner’.
