Decoration
Once passenger pigeons
could be scooped from the sky.
One flock, 300 miles long, took
fourteen hours to pass: 3.5 billion birds,
a large fraction of the population.
Slaughter took place on a massive
and mechanised scale. Two cents
a pair, cheap meat. Always plenty
to replace them: what did a few
more matter, or eggs unhatched?
Tuesday, 1st September, 1914:
Martha, last of the species, lay
lifeless in her cage in Cincinnati Zoo;
six and a half thousand men were
taken by surprise at Néry.
Captain Bradbury led L battery,
lost a leg then lost his life. They put
his picture on a cigarette card for
small boys to swap; their older sisters
kept other photos safe for ever.
Sergeant Nelson, badly wounded,
survived to fight for four more years.
Sergeant-Major Dorrell, veteran of the
Boer War, manned the last remaining
gun till all the shot was gone.
Martha’s moulting skin was
mounted on a branch, propped up
with pre-formed polystyrene, beside
a male pigeon shot forty years earlier,
he being the only one available.
Three men were awarded the VC for bravery at Néry in 1914: Capt E K Bradbury (posthumously), Sgt-Major G T Dorrell (served in the Home Guard in WWII) and Sgt D Nelson (killed in action, 1918).
After the 1921 census, Lord Northcliffe referred to “Britain’s problem of two million superfluous women.”