Wojtek the Bear [paperback] Read online

  As a cub he had been used to the temperate climate of Hamadan province and the lower slopes of the Zagros Mountains. However, at Gedera, situated well inland and only slightly above sea level, the summer temperature ranged from 32ºC to 38ºC (90ºF to 100ºF) and in Iraq it was even higher, with the thermometer often hitting 48ºC (118ºF) in July and August. For Wojtek, it must have been unbearable.

  In the summer at Gedera he would lie in the shadows under the water bowser, begging passing squaddies to turn on the valve. He managed to get a couple of soakings every day. When he was younger, the men dug a pit for him and filled it with water; he would lie in it long past the time it had been absorbed by the sandy earth, enjoying the coolness of the mud wallow that was left. In extremely hot weather he would remain in the mud for hours rather than face the fierce rays of the sun or hunt around for shade – which wasn’t much cooler. In particularly hot weather his wallow would be filled with water twice a day.

  Whatever triggered his escape bid, with typical ursine cunning Wojtek chose his moment well. It was some time before his absence from the camp was noticed. Immediately Peter and a couple of his colleagues, having ascertained from others the direction in which he was last seen heading, set off in hot pursuit. By now the runaway had put several miles of desert between him and the camp. In an inspired move, Peter commandeered the water bowser, rather than an army truck, for the chase.

  When they finally caught up with him, loping towards his natal home, it was clear from his determined demeanour that he wasn’t in any mood for being halted. Peter, however, released a little water from the bowser and called him by name. When the scent of the water reached him, Wojtek quickly capitulated, trading his freedom for a good soaking. Wet and cool, he was putty in Peter’s hands, following the bowser the whole way back to camp in hopes of getting another drenching.

  All was forgiven and Wojtek was still allowed his freedom. It was not long, however, before the mischievous bear was once again the centre of attention for all the wrong reasons, this time in a large Allied forces military camp in Iraq, to which the company was delivering supplies. In a glorious escapade reminiscent of the television series Mash, Wojtek went on the prowl, exploring his new quarters. His insatiable curiosity was aroused when he spotted a washing line of women soldiers’ underwear wafting in the breeze. Intrigued, he investigated this phenomenon and stole the lot. The half-dressed women, who had never ever encountered a very large bear in their camp, hid behind a tent, too terrified to intervene. They watched helplessly as Wojtek made off with his prizes wrapped round his head like some strange-looking washerwoman.

  The women, part of a Polish signals unit, were furious because, after months of living rough in their isolated camp in the dusty desert, they had only recently taken a rare trip to Tel Aviv to acquire the much-cherished underwear. The underwear was recovered by Peter and his companions before Wojtek, in a spirit of scientific inquiry, had an opportunity to shred the women’s lingerie with his sharp claws. The stolen goods were returned with some difficulty in keeping straight faces. Later they took Wojtek round to apologise – as sneaky an excuse as I’ve ever heard for young men to meet young women. Wojtek dutifully played his part, hiding his snout behind his large forepaws and whimpering piteously. Then he peeked out from behind his paws, his bright button eyes searching the girls’ faces to see what sort of effect he was having on them. Needless to say, they were charmed. But thereafter, in camps where the Poles were sharing facilities with strangers and army outfits which didn’t know the bear, a couple of soldiers were assigned the task of acting as Wojtek’s minders.

  However, the wily bear was still capable of giving his companions the slip when the notion took him. Again, it happened when the company was briefly stationed in Iraq on transport duty. On Christmas Eve he had participated in the Poles’ traditional feast, opened his numerous presents and imbibed probably more wine than was strictly good for him. Whether it was the effects of the alcohol, no one knows, but in the wee small hours Wojtek staged his own private party. He slipped away from his sleeping companions and stealthily made his way to the camp food store. There, with considerable thoroughness, he explored the contents of everything he could open, gorging himself on jams and fruits and whatever else he could find. In his search, he ruined copious amounts of flour, grain and other comestibles, trampling them everywhere. He spilled cooking oil, tore down storage shelves and completely trashed the place. It looked as if a tornado had swept through it. Instead of enjoying their brief leisure time free of any duties, the men had to spend several hours making everything shipshape once more.

  If it was at all possible, the men generally would conceal Wojtek’s breaches of discipline and good order from the officers, reckoning what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Equally, the officers often turned a blind eye to many of his misdemeanours. But this particular crime was too big to ignore so Wojtek had to accept his punishment: a very firm dressing-down from Peter plus peg-and-chain confinement for the day. Fortunately for an extremely chastened Wojtek, his sentence was commuted because it was Christmas Day and he soon regained his normal freedom.

  However, if his crime sheet was steadily growing, there were occasions when Wojtek redeemed himself. It was actually his obsession for water that led to his finest hour in June 1943: the day he captured an Arab spy.

  As an adult bear, Wojtek would take a communal shower with the men every day in the ablutions hut. It must have looked a preposterous sight – a very large bear in the middle of naked men lathering themselves with soap while he jostled against them, trying to hog the shower heads. He had very quickly worked out that all he had to do to get a shower was to pull the string and the water would cascade over him. This he would do over and over again until stopped. Water was a precious commodity in the Allied forces’ camps in the Middle East. Every drop had to be brought in by water tanker. Wojtek’s usage was so profligate that eventually he had to be barred from the showers and the door locked. Undeterred, Wojtek would hang around outside the ablutions hut like an addict, in hopes that someone using the showers would forget to lock the door or take pity on him and let him in for a water fix.

  At the time the company was camped near the desert town of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Strategically, it was extremely important because of its huge oilfields, to which Kurds, Turks and Iraqi Arabs all laid claim. The arrival of Allied forces in this volatile, oil-rich area, already full of ethnic tensions, was not at all welcome. Out for his usual early-morning stroll around camp, Wojtek discovered to his delight that someone apparently had forgotten to relock the shower door. In a flash, the bear was inside.

  Suddenly a terrified shriek pierced the air, galvanising the camp into action. Armed guards raced to the scene. There they found Wojtek cornering an Arab man in the showers. With tears running down his face, the prisoner pleaded with the guards to save him. He was marched off for interrogation where he admitted he had been spying. To escape detection after breaching the perimeter, he had picked the lock of the shower hut and crept inside, intending to sneak out again when the coast was clear to locate the camp’s weapons arsenal. The Arab’s spying mission was to conduct a reconnaissance for a raiding party from a nearby village the following night. However, no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy, as he was to find out. No sooner had he crept into the ablutions hut than Wojtek was in behind him. The encounter with Wojtek so unnerved the intruder – doubtless his interrogators also threatened to renew his acquaintance with the bear – that he speedily divulged all the names of his co-conspirators. Based on his confession, the dissidents were quickly rounded up in a series of lightning raids. As for Wojtek, he was fêted like a lord and given sweetmeats and beer. As a special treat he was allowed to go for an extra-long shower at the scene of his triumph. Legend has it that it lasted so long, and consumed so much water, that afterwards a special delivery had to be organised to replenish the camp’s supplies.

  The 22nd Company wasn’t the only Polish army ou
tfit to have a bear as its mascot. An infantry outfit, the 16th Lwów Rifles Battalion, had been given a bear by the Shah of Persia while the men were stationed in his country. They called the bear Michael and he was several years older than Wojtek.

  One day in September 1943 while Wojtek’s company was stationed in Iraq he was brought to meet Wojtek. The encounter erupted into a terrifying fight. As he approached Wojtek, Michael went into a berserker rage. He wrenched his restraining chain out of the grasp of his handlers and charged at Wojtek. Within seconds the animals were grappling with each other, enveloping each other in deadly bear hugs, slashing out with terrifying claws, and each trying to rip out the other’s throat with his fangs. The two titans were locked in mortal combat and there was no way the soldiers could intervene without themselves being killed or badly injured. At one point Wojtek, who was the stronger bear, began to get the better of Michael, catching him in a headlock that threatened to snap his neck. His comrades and Peter were all yelling at him to let go and, by some miracle, Wojtek finally responded to their shouts. As Wojtek pushed away his assailant Michael was separated long enough for his handlers to grab his chain and, mob-handed, get him back under control.

  Michael had a completely different temperament from that of Wojtek; he had a treacherous nature and could turn vicious without warning. The officers of the 16th Lwów Rifles Battalion had attempted to rehome him with an Australian regiment, but the delinquent bear, after thumping his new handlers, made his escape and ran back to his old battalion. The men weren’t keen to have him back so he was shunted onto the 22nd Company on the basis that their outfit already had experience in caring for bears. But there was no chance of Michael ever making friends with Wojtek. His hatred remained undiminished and any time he saw him he would roar out challenges and try to escape from his restraints to attack him. Thus it was, when the company later returned to Palestine, Michael was given to Tel Aviv Zoo. In thanks, its director sent the company a small monkey as a gift. The men called her Kaska.

  For poor Wojtek it was a case of swapping a delinquent bear for a delinquent monkey, whose sole delight in life, right from the very first time they met, was to torment him. At every opportunity she would tweak his nose or nip his ears, jump on his head when he was asleep and race up trees to hurl stones and dates at him, chattering at him all the time. Her behaviour towards him was so bad that Wojtek would cover his eyes with his paws when he saw her coming, as if blotting her out and ignoring her would somehow save him from the nips and nastiness. The sight of Kaska chasing Wojtek through the camp was most incongruous. Indeed, it actually got to the point where the men only had to shout her name and Wojtek would turn and flee. And it wasn’t just Wojtek she targeted. She would play nasty tricks on the men too, ripping up their cigarettes and thieving other items.

  However, Wojtek and his companions had more to concern them than a malicious monkey. Rumours were rife that soon their company was to see action in Italy as part of the 2nd Polish Corps under General Anders. In December 1943 Wojtek and his companions were moved to Egypt, where the 2nd Corps and other British forces were mustering, preparing to sail from Alexandria and Port Said for Italy. For Peter and the men, the big question was whether the top brass would permit Wojtek to accompany them. At virtually the last minute Wojtek’s special travel warrant was approved and on 13 February 1944 Wojtek and the company, aboard the converted troop ship MS Batory, set sail under protective convoy from Alexandria for the Italian port of Taranto. The Battle of Monte Cassino, in which Wojtek was to achieve legendary status, was just three months away.

  5

  Monte Cassino: A Legend is Born

  Historians still argue over whether the Battle of Monte Cassino, in which Wojtek fought with his comrades, was strategically necessary. It was the largest land battle fought in Europe in World War II, and was actually a series of four battles. The death toll was horrendously high. It is estimated it cost the lives of 60,000 men. One Polish soldier recollected: ‘My battalion of 1,001 men advanced into Monte Cassino village; three days of fighting reduced it to 97 men.’

  The reason for such heavy casualties was the rugged mountain terrain – and the fact that skilled German troops were making their stand at the strongest point of a powerful German defensive line known as the Gustav Line. Stretching coast-to-coast across Italy from Gaeta in the west to Ortona in the east, the Gustav Line had been prepared by the Germans long before the Allies landed in Italy. Some 10,000 men had worked for nine months constructing it along the Garigliano and Rapido rivers. It was a most formidable obstacle. Defended by 15 divisions of the German army, all seasoned troops, it had been fortified with dug-in artillery gun emplacements, concrete bunkers, machine-gun turrets, barbed wire and minefields.

  The village of Monte Cassino and its nearby 1,400-year-old Benedictine monastery were regarded by the troops as the toughest section of them all on the Gustav Line. It was a virtually impregnable redoubt standing at the end of a narrow valley which the Allied troops nicknamed Death Valley. It stood between them and their next military objective, driving their way through to Rome some 80 miles away.

  Unable to detour around Monte Cassino because its existence as an observation post threatened their supply lines, and already bogged down militarily for months on the beachhead it had precariously established at Anzio, the Allied advance had come to a halt in January 1944. The Germans, although heavily outnumbered, were well able to hold their positions. The mountainous terrain, ravines and rivers forced Allied tanks, military transport and guns down narrow valleys where, backed up in numerous clusters and log jams on narrow roads which were often little more than glorified tracks that could only be traversed by pack mules, they were highly vulnerable to German heavy artillery fire. Bitter weather added to the Allies’ woes.

  In the larger picture of the European campaign, the Battle of Monte Cassino had two other strategic goals: to facilitate break-out from the port of Anzio where the Allies had been penned in for five months and to engage as many German troops as possible in Italy so that they couldn’t replenish the forces defending the coastline of France from Allied invasion.

  When 2nd Polish Corps and the men of the 22nd Company arrived on the scene, three attempts to break through at Monte Cassino had already failed. The first assault took place in January and was beaten back. The second battle took place in February after heavy bombing of the monastery and its nearby village. Again the Allied troops were repulsed. A third fierce military engagement the following month was unsuccessful and left Monte Cassino in ruins.

  For the fourth and final assault, named Operation Diadem, General Anders volunteered his Polish troops to spearhead the attack on the Germans’ seemingly impregnable position and capture the Benedictine abbey. In the three weeks prior to that final battle, led by the Poles, it was Wojtek’s company’s job, along with others, to supply the artillery positions with the ordnance they needed to do the job.

  It was an exceptionally hazardous business. Ammunition had to be brought to the forward positions of the forces’ medium and heavy artillery so that meant 22nd Company and a number of other artillery supply companies had to drive without lights up narrow mountain roads with numerous hairpin bends. Total blackout was required for fear of alerting the enemy and drawing down a deadly artillery barrage. In complete darkness the drivers of each three-ton truck had to negotiate steep gradients, knowing that one false move could mean plunging hundreds of feet down one of the many sheer mountain precipices.

  It was a slow, laborious process getting the munitions to the guns. Often the driver’s mate had to walk in front of the truck, a white towel on his shoulders, guiding the vehicle. Alternatively, he would lie flat on the lorry’s front mudguard, telling the driver where and when to turn. The negotiation of virtually every hairpin bend was a cumbersome and nerve-wracking business for such large vehicles which were traversing roads completely unsuitable for their size. It involved the 22nd Company drivers sawing their lorries back and forth using forward and
reverse gears to get round each corner. In addition, sections of the road were enveloped by clouds of artificial fog in order to conceal any movement from German observation points; German artillery was already zeroed in on critical sections of the route.

  As one Polish veteran of the campaign – 65 years on, still the proud possessor of the Wojtek insignia that was created in the bear’s honour – recalls: ‘When we finally pulled into the positions of our artillery, we unloaded the ammo and fuses, and after a short rest, turned around and got out as fast as possible. In spite of all our precautions, a number of trucks crashed into the steep gorges, killing their drivers.’

  This, then, was the maelstrom into which Wojtek was pitchforked. It was an alien, dangerous and frightening world, and the first time he had seen action, but Wojtek very quickly adapted. Within a matter of days he went from being needy and clingy and refusing to go out in the open air because of the noise and explosions of gunfire to climbing up an exposed tree near 22nd Company’s encampment and calmly observing the mysterious flashes and bangs of enemy lines being bombed, strafed and pounded by heavy artillery.

  It was at this juncture that Wojtek achieved legendary status. His comrades were frantically unloading boxes of artillery shells for the Allied guns in the heat of battle. Wojtek joined them and with his paws outstretched, he indicated that he would help. Although he had never been trained to handle the unloading of 100-pound boxes of 25-pounder shells, shell fuses and other supplies, he simply observed what the men were doing and joined in, without any bidding. Standing upright, he held out his front paws into which men loaded the heavy boxes of shells. Effortlessly, he carried the munitions to their storage areas beside the artillery positions, and returned to the lorries to collect more. It was the company’s proud boast that he never dropped a single shell. However, it has to be said he did the lifting very much on his own terms: he chose when and how long he would work. At times he had to be wheedled into helping out. If he decided to stop and lie down for a bit, a titbit or two at either end of his supplies run could reinvigorate his war effort. In actual fact, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek’s company supplied approximately 17,300 tons of ammunition, 1,200 tons of fuel and 1,100 tons of food for Polish and British troops.