For the 50th on normandie landing, a group of cvanadian renactors took this pic

Bernière sur mer june 6 1994

1959 photo of Princess Papule - Pooli - mascot of attack transport USS Fremont, 1944-'45, on the occasion of her 15th birthday.  Pooli was born in the Navy Yard at Pearl Harbour on 4 July, 1944 and, on the same day, joined her ship in the company of a kindly sailor.  She subsequently saw action in the Marianas, Palau, the Phillipines and Iwo Jima, reflected in the three service ribbons and four battle stars on her uniform (rare, by the way, for a sailor to fit so well into his or her uniform 14 years after demob).  Pooli's action station was, apparently, the mail room, where she slept out all that noisy stuff among the mailbags.  After the war, she was looked after by the family of the sailor who had "recruited" her.

15 is a good age for a cat; by the time this photo was taken, she was deaf, largely toothless, and slept most of the time.  She was, however, a pretty feisty cat in her day.  Best regards, JR.

Old Sea Cat in retirement.

The skeletal remains of a heroic WWII pigeon were recently found in the chimney of a household located in Bletchingley, a town south of London.  So far, cryptographers, both professional and amateur, cannot seem to crack the code...

From the NY Times:

“Without access to the relevant code books and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt,” the Government Communications Headquarters said in a news release. “Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was undecipherable both then and now.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/europe/code-found-on-pigeon-baffles-british-cryptographers.html