Wojtek the Bear [paperback] Read online

  Today dogs are again being used in missions in Iraq and Afghanistan against rebel forces. Wearing specially designed oxygen masks, German shepherds are trained to parachute from 25,000 feet, strapped to SAS assault teams, in what are known as High Altitude High Opening jumps. With their handlers, they make their jumps up to 20 miles distant from their target and drift towards it. Their descents can take up to 30 minutes and at night they are practically undetectable by ground forces. On the ground, wearing mini cameras strapped to their heads, the dogs seek out insurgents’ hiding places and possible booby traps.

  In this age of hyper-communication, it seems barely credible that in both First and Second World Wars military strategists placed their trust in homing pigeons. But they did, either as the principal method of getting military intelligence from the front, or as a back-up to often-difficult radio communication. In fact, in the United Kingdom, there were strict Defence of the Realm regulations against shooting homing pigeons. Public posters stated sternly:

  Killing, wounding or molesting homing pigeons is punishable under the Defence of the Realm Regulations by Six Months’ Imprisonment or a £100 Fine.

  The public are reminded that homing pigeons are doing valuable work for the government, and are requested to assist in the suppression of the shooting of these birds.

  £5 Reward will be paid by the National Homing Union for information leading to the conviction of any person SHOOTING HOMING PIGEONS the property of its members.

  Pigeons in World War II saved many servicemen’s lives by getting through to their lofts with vital SOS messages from downed aircraft in often appalling weather conditions.

  On land, in the air and below the sea, it has to be said that military scientists have been dark geniuses in deploying the world’s most intelligent creatures in warfare. If the ‘flying dog’ missions in Iraq and Afghanistan seem the stuff of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller, the US navy’s intensive research into aquatic war roles for cetaceans borders on science fiction.

  Since the 1950s, when military research began in earnest, dolphins, sea lions and even whales have been deployed in naval warfare. Although much of its research remains classified, it is known that between 1960 and 1990, some The Bear at the Bottom of My Garden 11 240 dolphins were employed by the US navy. During the Cold War the Russians had a similar cetaceans programme. Both dolphins and sea lions have been used for a wide variety of tasks including protecting ports and navy assets from underwater attack and ‘patrolling’ shallow-water shipping, harbours and coastal military assets. Sea lions routinely assist in the recovery of American naval hardware such as highly expensive training targets by locating them and attaching them to recovery equipment, often diving down to depths of 500 feet.

  What the foregoing shows is that, in going to war, Wojtek seemed merely to be following in the footsteps of a long line of highly courageous animals stretching back more than 3,000 years. However, there was one vital difference. Unlike these animals, Wojtek had never been trained in any aspect of warfare. He was exposed to the sound of prolonged heavy artillery barrages – both incoming and outgoing – without ever having been acclimatised to the incessant noise and the lightning-like explosions of heavy ordnance that shook the ground and sent up huge clouds of earth. Such heavy bombardments could drive even veteran troops to the verge of collapse, known then as shellshock. That Wojtek survived mentally unscathed speaks volumes about his character, and for those around him.

  Wojtek died in 1963 but he continues to be a power for good. On the international front, his popularity is on the up. The Wojtek Memorial Trust launched in September 2008. Its aims – which I’ll outline in more detail in a later chapter – are to promote educational links and scholarships between the young people of Scotland and Poland, and, on a broader front, to encourage new and permanent friendships between the peoples of our two nations.

  That is very much as it should be. The influx of Polish workers to Scotland in recent years is really a continuation of history. The lives of Scots and Poles have been heavily entwined down the centuries. Few Scots today know that back in the seventeenth century, between 40,000 and 90,000 of our kinsfolk emigrated to Poland in search of religious freedom as well as economic betterment of their lives. The religious persecution known across Europe during the Protestant Reformation didn’t reach Poland. In fact, religious freedom was enshrined in Polish law, making the country a beacon of civilisation in those turbulent times. And let us not forget that Bonnie Prince Charlie was half Polish – his mother was Princess Clementina Sobiesky.

  Because Wojtek is involved, in the years to come the Trust will doubtless inspire some unusual projects which will make us all smile and generally stop us from taking life too seriously. After all, a charitable trust whose patron is a pint-swilling, cigarette-smoking bear who would happily wrestle anyone game enough to tangle with him, can’t really be too precious about its activities.

  2

  Love at First Sight

  I must have been around eight years old when I first saw Wojtek. I can still see him, sitting on a pile of rocks behind a deep pool waving one massive paw. I was thrilled to the very bottom of my being.

  A lifelong love affair was born. Let’s face it, I was a pushover: an impressionable young girl, an only child, the centre of my own universe. Of course the bear was waving to me – and me alone. I had no inkling that he was a crafty old showbiz trouper who, when he wanted a bit of attention, and more probably a bit of grub, would put on a performance worthy of a film actor.

  By this time Wojtek was being cared for in Edinburgh Zoo. As I clambered up the steep path to his enclosure, I was curious to see the bear I’d heard so much about. Oddly enough, on this first visit to see him, I wasn’t with my grandfather, Jim Little, my great co-conspirator who used to whisk me off on travels to destinations like Moffat where there was always an ice cream or a bag of sweets at the end of the journey. This time I was with a Sunday School trip from Trinity Church in Lockerbie. There must have been 40 or 50 of us excitable youngsters who, at the zoo gates, poured off two single-decker buses, the limp remnants of coloured streamers still dangling from every window. Those streamers seldom survived any journey intact and they announced to every passer-by that this was our much-looked-forward-to annual outing.

  As for me, that first Sunday School trip was unforgettable. Love at first sight always is! Be still my girlish heart, out of all the youngsters chattering and carrying on outside his enclosure, Wojtek had singled me out and waved to me. Nothing would convince me otherwise.

  My grandfather had started telling me stories about Wojtek when I was quite small, probably around three years of age. Jim enjoyed my company as I was always a very inquisitive child. A soldier in his day, he had a unique view of the world which he was more than happy to share with me. Although I knew from all Jim’s tales that Wojtek was a very large bear, it was only when I saw him in the flesh that I realised just how big he was. I was awestruck by his long nose and huge feet.

  I always thought of Wojtek as my grandfather’s bear. Indeed, when he heard that our Sunday School trip was to Edinburgh Zoo my grandfather taught me the Polish word for ‘hello’. Sure enough, when I shouted it out, Wojtek immediately looked in my direction – he responded instantly whenever he heard Polish being spoken – and gave me that first wave of his large paw. The thought of it still thrills me today.

  One of my ambitions, drawn from that day, is to have a plaque commemorating his life mounted at Edinburgh Zoo. When he was resident in the zoo there used to be one. But today there is no reference to him having lived there, simply due to the passage of time. He died, after all, in 1963. The world moves on and memories fade. However, nearly 50 years on, Wojtek is once more coming out of hibernation. There is international interest in his story. It is perhaps now time for his place in history to be remembered in the zoo where he spent so much of his adult life.

  There were to be later visits to Wojtek in Edinburgh Zoo with my mother and my grandmother, but I
recall one other overriding emotion from that first trip: I felt desperately sorry for Wojtek. In the confines of his zoo enclosure, to me, he truly looked a displaced bear. Around the farm and the camp he’d been allowed to roam free. Yes, he was locked up at night, but that was no more than happened to the other livestock. In the morning they were all let out in the fields. There is a certain sad irony about that fact: a bear in a DP (displaced persons) camp had more freedom than he did as a civilian bear living in his own compound at the zoo.

  A huge admirer of the Poles’ hardiness and fighting qualities, Jim visited Winfield Camp several times a week and he listened to all their tales. He always had a small treat for the bear, in the shape of an apple or some other titbit, in his pocket. It was only much later, when I began researching Wojtek’s life, that memories came flooding back and I realised just how many stories Jim had told me about Wojtek.

  My grandfather and Wojtek were great friends. There was a strong bond between them. In their own ways, they were both loners who had made the military their family. Wojtek had joined the Polish army as a scruffy little motherless bear cub. My grandfather, one of a family of nine, had run away from home at the age of 14 to go soldiering round the world. Fiercely independent, he was a small, wiry, bantam-cock of a man who was handy with his fists and didn’t take kindly to people taking liberties. He used to be a lightweight boxer.

  Like Wojtek with his Polish companions, Jim had travelled to many foreign outposts with his regiment, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and had participated in many of the darker moments of its military engagements. As a girl I rifled through a biscuit tin in the bedroom wardrobe of Jim’s home in Moniaive to sneak a peek at some of the mementos he’d brought back from foreign parts. They included photographs from the Boxer Rebellion in China when an international military force had to be sent in to rescue Westerners besieged in mission compounds by hordes of Chinese rebels. In horrid fascination I found myself staring at severed heads lying in the street where people had been executed by mobs intent on ridding China of ‘foreign devils’.

  In passing, it should be said that all Borderers have an abiding affection for the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Raised in 1689 to defend Edinburgh against the Jacobites, the Kosbies, as the regiment is often called by the general public (but never by the soldiers themselves), has a long and illustrious history. Still traditionally recruiting from Dumfries and Galloway, Lanarkshire and the Borders, it has served in many campaigns including the Napoleonic Wars, both World Wars and the Gulf War. There are six Victoria Crosses among its soldiers. In August 2006, despite a groundswell of protest, the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Scots to form the Royal Scots Borderers and became the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland.

  In the KOSB my grandfather achieved the rank of colour sergeant and was a strict disciplinarian with his men. When his regiment was back in Scotland and the men were returning to their barracks in Berwick upon Tweed after being out on military manoeuvres, he would first have them run up Halidon Hill and then double-time them across to Winfield Camp at Sunwick to have a brew with Wojtek. It was a social cuppa that both the squaddies and the bear enjoyed greatly. There can’t have been many farms in Scotland where you would come across a man talking over the fence to a bear which appeared to be hanging on his every word. But Sunwick was one of them.

  Well before Wojtek’s arrival in Berwickshire, Polish soldiers had arrived in large numbers in many of the towns and villages along the Scottish Borders. In 1942 they came to the pleasant and peaceful town of Duns. Whereas some troops had received a lukewarm welcome when passing through, Duns did the Polish troops proud. The cheers of the townsfolk were tinged with more than a little relief. Earlier, when the Poles’ tanks and heavy artillery were first seen on the horizon, there had been a local scare that Duns was being invaded by enemy forces. When it was discovered the new troops were Poles, the flags on the street came out in earnest.

  Younger generations have little notion of the huge number of people that moved in great waves through Scotland during and immediately after the war. Many were military personnel sent to the oddest corners of the country in strategic deployments against the German juggernaut. Tens of thousands of soldiers were bivouacked in normally sparsely populated areas of countryside. The military equivalent of fully fledged townships would spring up in fields virtually overnight, like mushrooms. It meant a tremendous influx of people into rural areas, and the Borders was no exception.

  During the war years a large contingent of Polish soldiers lived in camps in nearby Symington and Douglas. They were under the charge of General Stanisław Maczek who was impressed by the warm reception from local communities. But then news of the Poles’ courage and tenacity in battle had reached Scotland long before the men, so the Scots already knew the value of those soldiers as allies.

  A legendary commander, respected by friend and foe alike, General Maczek led the only Polish units not to lose a single battle after Poland was invaded by the Germans in 1939. Under blitzkreig attack, his forces made a dogged defence but their efforts were eclipsed when Russia invaded from the rear and they were forced to withdraw. Maczek was loved by his soldiers, who called him Baca, a Galician name for a shepherd, not dissimilar from the Scottish Gaelic word, Buachaille.

  When Germany finally capitulated, General Maczek went on to become commanding officer of all Polish forces in the United Kingdom until their demobilisation in 1947. After the war he chose to remain in Scotland, a de Gaulle-like figure who epitomised the struggle for a free Poland. Like many other Polish soldiers, he felt unable to return to Poland under the Soviet regime.

  The thousands of Polish servicemen left their mark on the Scottish Borders in many ways. Some stayed and created new lives and new families. One of their most enduring gifts was the open air map of Scotland they built in the grounds of what is now the Barony Castle Hotel in Eddleston, Peebleshire. While fighting in Holland, General Maczek once had been shown an impressive outdoor map of land and water in the Netherlands, demonstrating the working of the waterways which had proved such an obstacle to the Polish forces’ progress in 1944. At Eddleston the general and his fellow exiles decided to replicate the Love at First Sight 19 map; they conceived the Great Polish Map of Scotland as a permanent, open-air, three-dimensional reminder of Scotland’s hospitality to their compatriots. In 1975 the coastline and relief map of Scotland were laid out precisely by Kazimierz Trafas, a young geography student from the Jagiellonian University of Kraków. An infrastructure was built to surround it with a ‘sea’ of water and, at the general’s request, a number of Scotland’s main rivers on the map were even arranged to flow from headwaters pumped into the interiors of its mountains. It was, and still is, an amazing feat of engineering and design.

  Sadly, it was allowed to fall into disrepair. After long years of dereliction, the first steps are now being taken towards its restoration. One day soon people will again marvel at General Maczek’s Great Polish Map of Scotland in the grounds of Barony Castle, once the home of the Murrays of Elibank, and later the Black Barony Hotel. In the war years the house and grounds seem to have been in use by Polish forces, and even then an outdoor outline map was one of the features used to help plan the defence of the Scottish coastline which was under threat of invasion after the fall of Norway. Whether this was really the case, I have not been able to ascertain. Returned to commercial use in the late 1940s, years later the hotel came into the possession of a member of the Polish community who had been billeted there in wartime. He was a great friend of the general, and gave him permanent use of a suite in the hotel.

  General Maczek never did return to live in his beloved Poland; by the time it achieved genuine freedom, age and infirmity had taken their toll. In his later years he lived in Edinburgh. He died in 1994 at the age of 102, his name still synonymous with the history of World War II.

  It was at the Biggar Museum that I learned much of the foregoing, as well as being made aware of the long-standing Scotti
sh–Polish historical links which stretch back over the centuries. The town of Nowa Szkocja (Nova Scotia), for example, was named by Scots who settled in Poland. Indeed, Scots became so integrated that one of them, Alexander Czamer (Chalmers) was elected mayor of Warsaw four times before his death in 1703; sadly his tomb, housed in the Cathedral of St John in the city, was destroyed during the Warsaw uprising in 1944.

  With its own centuries-long history of military recruitment, the Borders took wartime upheaval pretty much in its stride. Winfield was a prime example. At the height of its use during the war years, Winfield Camp grew to a size where it accommodated 3,500 men – this in an area where the nearest villages could muster only a few hundred locals and a handful of able-bodied young men left behind in reserved occupations.

  In the war years, bonded by a common purpose, and intent on keeping invaders at bay, there were relatively few strains and stresses. But when Germany surrendered and the euphoria of VE Day had dissipated, the Borders folk, in common with the rest of Scotland, began waking up to the fact that they were living in an all but bankrupt nation whose infrastructure was seriously impaired, if not wrecked; and whose social order had been changed out of all recognition. Adding to that, they had on their doorstep large numbers of refugees with no homes and indeed no country to return to, it having been bargained away like poker chips as the great powers hastily redrew the map of Europe.

  In the aftermath of the war, the talk of building a land fit for heroes was paid considerable lip service. But away from the rhetoric the population imbalances and social strains could easily have overwhelmed the Borders. The bear living at the bottom of our garden would bring together two very different communities, providing each with the stimulus they needed to forge lasting ties of friendship. You might call it the Wojtek Factor.