Thank you to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Kathleen Rooney's new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Told in alternating chapters by two World War I heroes, this historical novel completely beguiled me. Cher Ami was a female homing pigeon, misnamed for a male who flew important messages between the American troops in France. In October of 1918, she helped save the Lost Battalion which was completely surrounded by German troops and in grave danger of being thoroughly wiped out. Major Charles Whittlesey was a New York attorney from a white shoe law firm who voluntarily entered the army as a Captain and was commander of the77th Division of the first Battalion, which became the Lost Battalion. Whittlesey excelled at managing his troops and while the Battalion lost a large number of men, many of his troops were able to walk out of the "Pocket" were they were pinned down. Kathleen Rooney writes beautifully descriptive sentences and while this book is at times charming, it is a story of war and she does not shy away from difficult details. I came into this story knowing nothing of the characters or their situations ( I had heard of the Lost Battalion but knew none of the details) and reading Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey reminded me how well written historical fiction both entertains and teaches.

“It is perhaps unnecessary to say that we pigeons, a species characterized by dramatic individual variation in color and form, find the human preoccupation with small differences in skin color very confounding”.

Homing pigeons played an important role in war. Due to their homing ability, speed and attitude, they were often used as military messengers.
Meet Cher Ami.....
.....a female homing pigeon who had been donated by the pigeon fanciers of Britain for used by the US Army Signal Corps in France during World War I....
.....and had been trained by American pigeoners.
Cher Ami, ( French for ‘dear friend’), was most famous for delivering a message from an encircled battalion despite serious injuries during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, October 1918.

A little background history:
The Meuse-Argonne offensive (also known as the Meuse River-Argonne Forest offensive, the Battles of the Meuse-Argonne, and the Meuse-Argonne campaign)....
was a major part of the final allied offensive of WWI that stretched along the entire western front. It was fought from September 26, 1918 until the Armistice of November 11, 1918, a total of 47 days. The Meuse-Argonne offensive was the largest in the United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers. It’s the second deadliest battle in American history, resulting in over 350,000 casualties including 28,000 German lives, 26,277 American lives in an unknown a French lives. U.S. losses were worsened by the inexperience of many of the troops, tactics used during the early phases of the operation and the widespread onset of the global influenza outbreak > The Spanish Flu.

Today..... Cher Ami ( her stuffed body), is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

THIS ‘novel’....by Kathleen Rooney.....( based on a true story), is endearing as can be.
It’s not dry facts. It’s not boring. It’s not weird. It’s not goofy. Rather it’s.....fascinating, educational (all new information to me), sad but interesting.... sad and beautiful....horrifying, but also moving.

I included some basic facts- above- [ thank you Wikipedia]....for those readers who enjoy adding straight basic historical details.
Adding these additional informative details are not necessary......but I enjoyed the creative-imaginable storytelling so much.....I couldn’t resist looking up a few real facts about our star protagonists:
***CHER AMI and MAJOR WHITTLESEY***

It feels like *Cher Ami* and *Major Whittlesey* are both literally
in the same room - chatting we us - as we become very close friends.

THE VOICE of....BOTH Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey ( who alternated in narrating).... felt very much alive in our hearts.
........ They are ‘both’ TENDER, REAL, SWEET, INFORMATIVE, and KIND....
and very easy to love!

A little more basic facts:
Meet Major Charles Whittlesey....
.....he and more than 550 men we’re trapped in a small depression on the side of the hill behind enemy lines without food or ammunition. They were also beginning to receive friendly fire from allied troops who did not know their location. Surrounded by the Germans, many were killed and wounded and only 194 men were still alive and not captured or wounded by the end of the engagement. Because his runners were consistently intercepted or killed by the Germans, Whittlesey began dispatching Messages by pigeons. Many were wounded.
Cher Ami was dispatched with a note, written on onion paper, in a canister on her left leg.....
“We are along the road parallel [sic] to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heavens sake stop it”

As Cher Ami tried to fly back home, The German saw her rising out of brush and opened fire. After several seconds, she was shot down but managed to take flight again. She arrived back at her loft at division headquarters. She helped save the lives of 194 survivors. She had been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, and had a leg hanging only by a tendon.
Cher Ami became the hero of the 77th Infantry Division. Army medics work to save her life. They were unable to save her leg, so they carved a small wooden one for her. When she recovered enough to travel, then now one legged bird was put on a boat to the United States, with General John J. Pershing ( General of the Armies), seeing her off.

Cher Ami, ( a pigeon), was awarded the Croix de Guerre Medal for her heroic service in delivering 12 important messages in Verdun ( a small city in France).
She died in Fort Monmouth New Jersey, on June 13, 1919 from the wounds she received in battle and was later inducted into the Racing Pigeon Hall of Fame in 1931.

Charles Whittlesey- born January 20, 1884- disappeared November 26, 1921. He was a United States Army Medal of Honor recipient who led the ’Lost Battalion’ in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive during WWI. On November 26, 1921, he committed suicide by drowning on route to Havana at age 37.
He attended Williams College and Harvard University, ( where he earned his law degree) ..... and was voted the third brightest man in his class.
Born in Florence, Wisconsin. He moved with his family to Massachusetts as a young boy.

Kathleen Rooney gives us compelling heartfelt depth and human understanding to the reality of history.
Cher Ami was more than just a messenger pigeon, a tool during dangerous flights of war.....more than a stuffed paraphernalia visual behind glass in the Smithsonian.....
she was smart ...had feelings... thoughts... opinions.... and we get to know her through the voice Rooney reveals.
CHER AMI .....from Wright Farm....loves to chatter....she’s a pigeon after my own heart. ( possibility a lesbian too....but I’ll let other readers decide that for themselves). When she was speaking ( ha, called narrating)....I was ‘putty-in-her-feathers’, hanging onto every word she shared)
“Then I ran into a thick pewter fog, as dangerous to homing as was any predator. I had to wait on the roof of a house for an hour, drinking from the wet shingles and thinking how I longed to be home with John and corn, John and peas. When the fog lifted at dusk, I flew on at almost a hundred miles per hour to make up time, but soon night fell, and pigeons can’t fly at night, or rather can’t home. The world pours clues at us, as it always does, but when the sun’s gone, they stop adding up”.

Shhhhh.....
Cher Ami was at first mistaken for a male. Sex in pigeons was not entirely straightforward. If John J. Pershing had been clear from the beginning, Cher Ami would have been Chere Amie.
The external anatomy of pigeons provide few hints of their sex... so it’s mostly behavior that determines their gender.
Cher Ami ‘acted’ liked many males did > she showed affection for other females.
Charles Whittlesey showed affection for other men.
Together these two lovable beings....were both heroic kindred spirits.

I was reminded again about injustice - judgements - about sex and race ...
I was reminded of the brutalities of war - for all species....
mistreatments... and violence.
Cher Ami was wise and sensitive to the world around her....just as Charles Whittlesey was:
She says:
“Throughout the war I noted with disappointment how frequently soldiers would use sex and race to shore up their own fragile concord, as if any acrimony might be smoothed over through agreement that women and darker-complexioned persons are weak, stupid, and unreliable”.

A wonderful pigeon & human story. History comes alive. Memories shared by Cher Ami and her family, parents and siblings ( meet Miss America too), are simply irresistible.
The stories we learn from Charles Whittlesey are engrossing and alluring.

Here’s a little excerpt that gave me pause....and much appreciation for the food I eat here at home.
“To call the shipboard food terrible was to overpraise it. Our meals are prepared by English cooks, committed to safeguarding their reputation for awfulness. Boil potatoes, rice, tapioca, and marmalade— no salt, no sugar, no seasoning of any kind. For lunch that day, we’d had rabbit stew, which tasted as if the cooks had left the fur on. Coffee was served from garbage cans. Seasick man puked sickly over the sides: feeding the fishes, they called it”.

This book filled is a mixture of humanity, history, and endearing storytelling.

Heartfelt ... heartbreaking.... incredibly memorable.

I’ll never forget - either Charles Whittlesey or Cher Ami. They live deeply inside me now....
I morn them both....as I came to truly love them both.


Many thanks to Penguin Group Penguin Books, Netgalley, and Kathleen Rooney

I started to read this and only got through the first chapters that gave the background of Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. I was quite bored. I don't understand why it was written this way. I might have stayed with it if it had started with Whittlesey before the war.

"In life I was both a pigeon and a soldier...Pigeons cannot fight. Yet I was once as well known...as any human hero of what was then called the Great War...I am enshrined, stuffed, a piece of mediocre taxidermy...in the Smithsonian...History buffs tell "the tale of my heroism..." "During that big war in France, some American soldiers got trapped in enemy territory...a unit that would soon be known throughout the world as part of the Lost Battalion...under the command of newly minted Major Charles White Whittlesey".

"I was born into a family of achievers...Dad was famous...for his record race times...Mum...for her ability to traverse prodigious distances without getting tired". Mistakenly thought to be a cock, I was named Cher Ami. "I first became aware of my extraordinary capabilities for navigation and travel...accompanied by...[a] need to fly home...thus [my] usefulness on the battlefield". In the Spring of 1918, I was sent to France to be used as a messenger for the American Army.

Charles White Whittlesey, aka Whit, was a Wall Street lawyer. Perhaps he would "soldier for democracy, a desire to unite with other men in common purpose". Whit started as a volunteer, eventually deciding to enlist, thus serving as a commissioned officer. "In short order, I stowed my profound uncertainty as an untested officer and entered territory familiar from my student days: the domain of the raconteur...If you've got your wit, then you've got your wits, and men know they can follow you without fear".

On October 2, 1918, the 308th Regiment, under the command of Major Whittlesey, left the trenches advancing into the Argonne Forest. The Lost Battalion, was so named because "...it got cut off from the rest of the Allied Forces...we had trapped ourselves...our success was failure...without support we couldn't move forward, and without guidance we couldn't fall back...by that afternoon, [Cher Ami] was the last pigeon, all others having been dispatched with...urgent messages".

In alternate chapters, Cher Ami and Whit share their stories. Cher Ami describes her war preparedness through compassionate handling by pigeoneers Private Cavanaugh and Corporal Gault. Others describe Whit, "Whit...was a lamb who fought like a lion". War changed everything!

"Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey" by Kathleen Rooney was not the read I expected. It was so much more. The soldiers and homer pigeons were masterfully fleshed out. I was saddened by the words, "Hail and farewell, brother. I salute you, and good-bye". How were those returning from the front able to fully embrace life after their harrowing experiences? A heartfelt, emotional tome I highly recommend.

Thank you Penguin Books and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.