The Message
by Lilian M. Howell, Argentina
The night was cold. The tiny French fishing village seemed asleep behind the closed shutters. Yet, an attentive eye could distinguish silent figures emerging from the shadows.
Word had gone around that late that later there would be a meeting at the chapel. The invasion of the enemy during the week had surprised the villagers who had no concern whatever for politics, greed for power, or for wars.
Access to the village, practically hidden on the French coast from the open sea, had been simple for the invaders. Once their base was settled they would continue to assert control over the region.
Slowly, silently the villagers, most of them covered by dark, waterproof jackets, entered the sacristy and stood in a circle around the school teacher.
The statues of the saints were the only witnesses that night to the white, tense faces.
The aim of the meeting, as the teacher informed them, was to send warning to the other villages of the area without being discovered.
- Nobody can leave or enter our village without being followed, he informed them. Telephone lines have been interrupted, we are totally isolated from the rest of the country.
Pierre, a young student timidly raised his hand.
- As everybody knows, every morning my father and I train our pigeons. Some of them are messenger pigeons. We can use three or four birds to send messages, hidden in the rings around their legs, to the largest villages, and they can warn the rest.
The following morning the soldiers, tired and sleepy after their night watch, paid no attention whatever to the pigeons circling in the sky above.
Little did they know that some of the birds were carriers of a message of Liberty and Peace to the rest of France.