[PSUBS-MAILIST] mascots?

[Ray Keefer <Ray.Keefer@Sun.COM>]

Hi,

Any of you taking mascots in your subs? How about a reindeer?

Regards,
Ray

	From Michael Adams <Abrigon@yahoo.com>
	Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated
	Subject: Truth Wierder than Fiction - British sub and reindeer
	Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 02:51:42 -0900
	
	from the moscow times....
	
	Reindeer Sailed on World War II Sub
	
	By Kevin O'Flynn
	Staff Writer
	
	Royal Navy Submarine Museum
	
	Sladen hugging Polly Anna in the recently found photograph
	that proves the
	legend.
	
	
	A World War II legend of how a Russian reindeer sailed from
	the Far North to
	Britain in a submarine had always been written off as one of
	those hoary old
	wartime tales.
	
	But 60 years later, the tale has been proven true with the
	unearthing of a
	photograph showing the burly commander of the HMS Trident,
	Commander
	Geoffrey Sladen, with Polly Anna the reindeer, a gift from
	one generous
	Soviet admiral.
	
	The British Royal Navy Submarine Museum, which received the
	photograph last
	week, had heard of the reindeer from a former Trident crew
	member, but had
	always been suspicious until the photo came along, museum
	director Jeff
	Tall, a retired British submarine commandant, said
	Wednesday.
	
	The Trident was among a fleet of submarines and supply ships
	that the
	British Navy sent to support the Soviet Union after the
	Nazis invaded in
	June 1941. The submarines, although sometimes called on to
	defend the
	merchant ships carrying badly needed supplies to the
	beleaguered Red Army,
	were mainly patrolling the seas of the Norwegian coast in a
	hunt for German
	supply ships.
	
	The Trident was based at Polyarny near the Arctic port of
	Murmansk, and it
	was there that the reindeer made its appearance.
	
	On the sub's last night at port, Trident commander Sladen
	had a farewell
	dinner with a Soviet admiral. Through the perhaps not very
	good services of
	a translator, the two chatted about their families and
	Sladen explained how
	his wife had to push a baby carriage up the hill to get to
	the shops.
	
	The admiral, obviously wanting to help Sladen's wife, duly
	sent along the
	local equivalent of a baby carriage puller, a baby reindeer
	that was passed
	through the torpedo hatch in a gray bag. With the crew too
	busy moving out
	of port, no one realized what was inside the bag until the
	submarine was at
	sea.
	
	The reindeer, quickly named Polly Anna after the port of
	Polyarny, soon
	became the sub's pet, roaming the sub at will and living in
	the captain's
	cabin.
	
	Polly Anna quickly adopted a new mother figure in Sladen, a
	large, burly
	character who once played rugby for England.
	
	Every evening when the sub's klaxon would ring to signal
	that the submarine
	was surfacing, Polly Anna would rush from her cabin to stand
	under the
	hatch, eager for a breath of fresh air. The only person she
	would allow to
	get close to the hatch was Sladen.
	
	The Soviet admiral had kindly placed food -- local Murmansk
	moss -- in the
	bag with Polly Anna. Unfortunately, he hadn't known that the
	sub was not
	heading straight back to Britain but on a three-week
	mission. When the food
	ran out after three days, the animal was fed scraps from the
	submariner's
	galleys.
	
	"He took a great fancy to Carnation Milk," Tall said.
	
	However, a wild animal in the tight confines of a submarine
	during wartime
	was far from ideal.
	
	"Polly Anna probably was about as happy at the smell of 53
	submariners as
	they were happy with the smell of a reindeer," Tall said.
	
	And when the submarine arrived three weeks later in Blyth in
	northeastern
	England, Polly Anna had grown so much that she could not fit
	through the
	hatch.
	
	"Fortunately there was a butcher on board," said Tall,
	pausing with the
	relish of a story well told, "and they trussed her up and
	pulled her out of
	the hatch."
	
	Tall believes the newly found photo was taken not long after
	the submarine
	arrived in Blyth in November 1941.
	
	"It's wonderful," Tall said. "You have the combination of
	this commander who
	was in charge of a submarine whose job was to destroy and
	this Russian
	reindeer."
	
	After arriving in England -- and after the hug depicted in
	the photograph --
	Polly Anna was presented to London Zoo in Regent's Park as a
	present to the
	British people from the Russian people.
	
	Sladen went back to the Trident, going on to receive a
	number of medals,
	including the British Distinguished Service Cross and
	France's Croix de
	Guerre.
	
	The identity of the Soviet admiral was unclear Wednesday.
	The Submariners
	Seamen's Club in St. Petersburg could not immediately
	identify him, although
	a representative said he had heard -- and dismissed as fable
	-- the reindeer
	story.
	
	Polly Anna, however, was said to have never forgotten her
	youth under the
	seas, Tall said. Whenever she heard the clanging bell of a
	fire engine going
	past the zoo she would lower her head as if ready to rush to
	the hatch.
	
	She died in 1946, only a few days after the Trident was
	decommissioned.