World War I carrier pigeons probably saved Private Fred
Beer’s life
heraldsun.com.au /news/victoria/world-war-i-carrier-pigeons-probably-saved-private-fred-beers-life/newsstory/52db181fb2b18a9e4f27878204635caa
Patrick Carlyon, Herald Sun
April 22, 2017 9:00pm
THE secrets of Private Fred Beer’s war appeared to die with him in 1971. He didn’t talk about his experiences:
few Anzacs could with their families.
Beer’s descendants knew that he was the son of a Murray River steamboat engineer and that his courtship with
his wife, Minnie, began before he headed to Europe. He was short and dark as a lad, an ironmonger by trade,
who had sought his parents’ consent to enlist.
But they were unaware that his kindly bent cushioned him from the heat of Cairo and the frosts of France. They
did not know how close he came to death so many times, or that his life was probably saved by feathered friends
he never spoke of.
Fred Beer twitched and rasped in latter years, the legacies of horrors that broke men and cracked their families.
His grandchildren — eight in all — guessed at this. But they did not know about Pa’s little black book.
Nine years ago, Beer’s granddaughter received a phone call from a stranger in NSW. The lady had been ringing
Beers at random in the phone book. She had found a war diary from 1916: Pvte F.J.L. Beer read the name on
the inside cover. Would Mr Beer’s family care to have it?
Fred Beer’s diary includes references to Anzac Day in 1916. Picture: David Caird
Beer had kept a neat hand. His diary is well-preserved: it survived 12 months of slush and bogs, perhaps
wrapped in oil cloth and secreted in an inner pocket. Beer jotted observations that, like so many Australians at
war, made light of the puddles and the body parts.
The Germans were “Old Fritz”. Shells were “crackers” to be “chucked” back and forth. Beer relied on letters for
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comfort, and the odd Charlie Chaplin movie. When he got his first wash in a month, he did not “suppose the fleas
enjoyed it too much”.
There were “close shaves”, as he called them, so many that as his war service record shows his nerves could
endure no more by late 1918. In one, shrapnel from a shell knocked off his helmet but Beer was unharmed. He
led a charmed war, if surviving the Western Front could be described as lucky for those who returned home
haunted and shrunk. Beer’s best break, as his diary reveals, landed at the same time as his comrades received
one of their worst.
Fred Beer, aged 47, as a cin the
Voluntary Defence Force.
By July 1916, Beer was used to night shellings
and daytime sleeps. On the 15th, he was one of
three men selected for an unusual role in the
29th Battalion. In these final days before the
botched attack at Fromelles, Beer was getting
instructions in the handling of pigeons. He was
learning how to fold and attach messages to
their legs.
On July 19, what was an 18-hour day with
carrier pigeons for Beer would be remembered
as the worst night in Australia’s military history.
Beer was “busy running about” and heard that
“our boys” had brought back German prisoners.
These reports were misleading. Twelve sets of
Victorian brothers were among the 2000 or so
Australians killed in a night. Private Jim
Cleworth, of the 29th, would describe Fromelles
— his first major engagement — as “like a
bloody butcher’s shop”.
Beer’s pigeon duties became routine. He
considered it cushier than other roles, but he
was hardly safe. From dawn to dusk, Beer would scoot between pigeon lofts at divisional headquarters and the
front lines, where the birds were carried in baskets.
“Cast iron”, as he called the shellings, killed indiscriminately, and Beer witnessed many sudden and random
deaths behind the lines. He was heartened when the treks began to be made during the day rather than in
darkness.
In one carrier pigeon message, he relayed the news of an Allied plane being hit by German fire. By then —
September 1916 — the merit of pigeons was well recognised. At Fromelles, pigeons had offered the swiftest
message service between the front and headquarters — 17 minutes. In one noted example, a pigeon carried a
demand for more wire at the front.
Introduced by the AIF in about March 1916, pigeons were of “inestimable value” in “certain critical moments”,
according to Australia’s official historian, Charles Bean. Yet a live messaging service had limits.
Pigeons have poor night vision. They could be shot out of the sky. Or captured by the enemy. When the
Australian 6th Brigade caught two German carrier pigeons at the Battle of Broodseinde in late 1917, they
replaced a message with a cheeky sentiment before sending the bird on its way. It seems the Australians may
have eaten the other bird.
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Beer wrote of watching aircraft in dogfights. Pilots, too, carried pigeons. They did not know whether to release
the birds upwards or downwards so that the birds would avoid the propeller blades.
Pigeons saved lives. Cher Ami, in a tale still celebrated, was the last of three carrier pigeons of a “lost battalion”
of Americans trapped and isolated in France in October 1918. He was the only hope but, Cher Ami, too, was
shot down by enemy fire on taking flight from the scrub.
A carrier pigeon being released from a World War I tank. Picture: Australian War Memorial
Cher Ami took off again and flew to divisional headquarters 40km away in 25 minutes — despite being shot
through the breast and splattered in his own blood. His leg was almost shot off. From it dangled a canister
containing a scribbled plea for help. Cher Ami might have fitted into a shoebox, yet he saved 194 lives.
Neil Beer thinks pigeons preserved his family lineage. His grandfather returned home and married his constant
penpal through the war, Minnie. Fred Beer went into a Kerang timber and hardware business with his wife’s
brother and they prospered. Fred and Minnie, who would die 13 days apart after half a century of marriage,
stand as the great-grandparents to more than 20.
Neil Beer recalls his grandfather mentioning the war only twice. Once, Beer spoke of the extreme conditions.
Another time, he joked about the dangers of relieving one’s self in a frontline trench.
Beer was gassed and would always be prone to shortness of breath. His family were tight, and if Neil Beer’s
grandfather sometimes seemed serious, he was also a jovial and supportive influence around the younger
generations. Fred Beer flinched unexpectedly at times, a likely consequence of the shellshock that earned him a
trip home in late 1918. By then, Beer had been involved in numerous Australian campaigns on the Western
Front.
Neil Beer was understandably emotional when he visited Fromelles for 100th anniversary commemorations last
year. It was here his grandfather first described “his very easy job”, which his grandson believes saved his life.
“I think perhaps if he had not have been in the pigeon corps and in and out of the trenches, I might not have been
here,” Neil Beer says.
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Australian War Memorial project officer Jason d'Arx with a WWI gas mask for a dog and gasproof box for pigeons.
Fred Beer showed no interest in birds on his return home. They were wrapped up in his war service, which
charted a course of mud and misery through France and Belgium. It’s unclear whether he retained his pigeon
duties through 1917-18.
Beer suffered through sharp frosts in the trenches over the winter of Christmas 1916. Trenches collapsed as
soon as they were built where he was positioned in the Somme. Both sides used gas shelling. The German
liquid lay harmlessly on the ground, often impossible to detect, sometimes until the sun’s rays evaporated it long
afterwards, and its fumes became deadly. The same effect took place when the liquid stuck to soldiers’ uniforms.
What is clear is that Beer’s war only got harder after his 1916 diary ended with a kind of prayer: “Am thankful to
God for his goodness to me and my loved ones.”
There were hospital stays and the winter freezes and endless spells on the Hindenburg line. For the first seven
months there, Beer’s division served almost five months on the front line.
There was some respite for the Anzac Day anniversary — celebrated in good weather with a grand divisional
sports day — but Beer’s brigade was back at the front soon enough. Anzac Day was special even then — a year
earlier, at the Suez Canal, Beer spoke of a sports meeting and swimming carnival to mark the first after the
Gallipoli landing. Yet the glimpses of normality were becoming more fleeting.
In September 1917, Beer survived the Battle of Polygon Wood — a haze of pillboxes, fog, shells and machine
guns — where duckboards snaked between flooded craters and tree stumps.
No wonder his family cannot remember Beer talking about pigeons and the war.
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