This pigeon once carried messages for Germany in WWI. After being captured by America, his offspring served the US in WWII and received 32 medals for saving the lives of nearly 1000 soldiers

Soldiers, tanks and aircraft dominate accounts of the two World Wars. Yet among the millions who played a role in military operations were some unlikely messengers: pigeons. When artillery destroyed telephone lines and battlefield conditions made human runners vulnerable, these birds could carry crucial information through smoke, gunfire and bad weather. Among them was Kaiser, a German military pigeon whose extraordinary life took him from serving Kaiser Wilhelm II's forces to spending decades with the US Army and whose offspring would eventually serve the country that had captured him.

Kaiser began the war on Germany's side

According to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Kaiser hatched in Koblenz, Germany, in February 1917. At six weeks old, he was handed over to the Imperial German Army and trained to carry military messages. Pigeons had become particularly useful in trench warfare.

Communication wires could be severed by artillery, while messengers attempting to cross battlefields faced enormous danger. Homing pigeons offered another way of getting information back to military positions. Kaiser began carrying messages for German forces in northern France in 1917, the same year the United States entered the war.

American soldiers captured him in 1918

Kaiser's allegiance changed through circumstances rather than choice. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in October 1918, soldiers of the US 28th Infantry Division captured a German trench position in the Argonne Forest. Among the equipment seized was a basket containing 10 German pigeons. Kaiser was one of them.

After the Armistice, the US Signal Corps decided to bring captured German pigeons to America. Kaiser and 21 others arrived in July 1919 and were subsequently displayed for recruiting and morale purposes. He eventually settled at the Signal Corps Pigeon Centre at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. There, the former German messenger acquired the name by which history remembers him and began an unexpected second career.

His offspring went to another World War

Rather than carrying messages himself, Kaiser became an important breeding bird for the US Army. By the 1930s, the Smithsonian says, he was the last surviving captured German pigeon in American custody. His offspring developed reputations as strong homing and racing birds. After the United States entered World War II, Kaiser's descendants were sent to serve American forces in Europe and the Pacific. Kaiser was transferred to the Army's Pigeon Breeding and Training Centre at Camp Crowder, Missouri. By 1945, he had fathered more than 75 birds for the Army.

His age even earned him special treatment: Kaiser and his mate, Lady Belle, lived in their own white loft equipped with an electric heater. Military pigeons remained genuinely useful during WWII. The Smithsonian notes that 32 received medals for their wartime service; one, G.I. Joe, carried a message that helped avert a bombing and saved roughly 1,000 Allied troops.

From prisoner of war to presidential inauguration

Kaiser became something of a military celebrity. The Army celebrated his 31st birthday in 1948, complete with a party organised by children at Fort Monmouth's nursery school. The following January, Kaiser travelled to Washington for President Harry Truman's inauguration alongside celebrated pigeons G.I. Joe and Jungle Joe.

Kaiser died at Fort Monmouth on Halloween night in 1949, aged 32. He had outlived Kaiser Wilhelm II and every other homing pigeon that had served during World War I, according to the Smithsonian.

An unlikely military legacy

After his death, Kaiser's remains were preserved and transferred to the Smithsonian, where they remain part of the National Museum of American History's collection, although the specimen is not currently on display. The US Army finally discontinued its pigeon programme in 1957 as advances in electronic communications made the birds increasingly unnecessary.

Kaiser's story nevertheless captures an easily forgotten chapter of military history. A bird trained to carry German messages in one world war was captured by his enemy, transported across the Atlantic and ultimately produced descendants that served that former enemy in another.