Captain Charles Whittlesey was having a terrible October 4th. Not only were he and his men tasked with engaging the deeply entrenched Germans at Argonne, but by just the 2nd day of their undermanned effort, he’d already lost two whole carrier pigeons. And that’s when his own confused allies started bombing him. Whittlesey quickly hammered out what he could (seriously, go look at it), tied it around the leg of his last, best hope, and, in pangs of solemn desperation, sent him off. I can only imagine how heightened the already-deep bond between an officer and his pigeon must have been in that moment.