What happened
In the spring of 1942, the Polish army that had been formed in the Soviet Union under General Władysław Anders was evacuated to Iran, along with thousands of Polish civilians. On April 8, on the road through Iran, the soldiers met a young Iranian boy carrying a brown bear cub whose mother had been shot by hunters. An 18-year-old refugee, Irena Bokiewicz, talked Lieutenant Anatol Tarnowiecki into buying him. Accounts differ on exactly where it happened and what was paid.
Irena looked after the cub in a refugee camp near Tehran for three months. In August 1942 he was given to the 2nd Transport Company, later the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, and the soldiers named him Wojtek. He was too young to eat, so they fed him condensed milk from an old vodka bottle. As he grew, he wrestled with the men, rode in the cab of the company’s trucks, learned to salute, and developed a taste for beer.
The company moved with the rest of the Polish forces through Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. In early 1944 the 2nd Polish Corps was sent to Italy, and mascots and pets were not allowed on the troop ships. The usual explanation is that the company got around the rule by putting Wojtek on its books as a soldier. According to the Imperial War Museum he was enlisted, given a service number and the rank of private. He had his own paybook too. On February 13, 1944 he sailed with his company from Alexandria to Taranto on the Polish liner MS Batory.
In May 1944 the Polish Corps fought in the last battle of Monte Cassino, and the company’s job was bringing shells forward to the guns. Men who were there said Wojtek watched them lift the ammunition crates and copied them, carrying crates from the trucks to the stacks. A British soldier also recalled seeing a bear carrying shells. No official war diary records it, but his comrades told the story for the rest of their lives.
Wojtek was promoted to corporal, and the 22nd Company took a bear carrying an artillery shell as its badge. In 1946 he went with the company to Scotland. When the unit was demobilized, he was given to Edinburgh Zoo, where he arrived on November 15, 1947. Former soldiers visited him for years, and several accounts say he reacted when they called to him in Polish. He died at the zoo on December 2, 1963, at about 21. Since 2015 a bronze statue of him walking beside a Polish soldier has stood in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh.
The twist
To get a bear onto a troop ship, the army made him a soldier. He finished the war as a corporal.
Sources
- Museum of Polish History, Wojtek – miś, który został żołnierzem. Muzeum Historii Polski, Warsaw (in Polish)
- The Polish Genealogist, Wojtek the Soldier Bear: The Real Story and His Comrades. Citing the Imperial War Museum and Historic Environment Scotland
- Imperial War Museums, Animals and the Second World War
- Wikipedia, Wojtek (bear)