I have posted about my favourite film, The Jungle Book which was a childhood favourite. Who didn’t love Baloo singing about the bare necessities? Baloo is from the Hindi for bear. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and the human antics and behaviours of Baloo are nothing compared to Wojtek.
Claire and I have just returned from visiting Claire’s sister and her husband in Duns, where there is a statue of Wojtek. What an incredible bear he was. He was sold to a group of Polish soldiers by an Iranian boy who had found him in the mountains after his mother had been shot by hunters. He became a favourite of the Polish soldiers who in order to provide for his upkeep had him enlisted in the army as a private, later promoted to corporal. His favourite drink was beer, and he loved wrestling with the soldiers. He also enjoyed eating cigarettes. He slept with the soldiers, and appears to have thought he was human. He marched with the soldiers on his hind legs, because that’s what they did.
The 2nd Polish Corps was sent to Italy to serve alongside Eighth Army. At the battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek helped his comrades by carrying heavy crates of artillery shells, not dropping one of them. It normally required four men to carry a crate. My father served in Eighth Army in Africa, Italy and Normandy, but he wasn’t at Monte Cassino. He never mentioned Wojtek in his many stories, and he certainly would have done if he’d encountered that amazing bear. At the end of the war Wojtek went with his unit to Winfield Airfield near Duns. When the unit was demobilised, he was given to Edinburgh Zoo, where he was often visited by journalists and his Polish soldier friends. He died on 2nd December 1963 aged 21. What a bear!