Wojtek the Bear [paperback] (2 page)

The memory of these atrocities was silently endured by the Poles who came to Scotland and, hopefully, a new life. Scotland was the arrival point for all Polish servicemen brought to the UK
before being dispersed to camps across Britain. They would barely be settled into one camp before being moved on to another. Tens of thousands finally ended their travels at Winfield or at the many
other camps in the Borders and other parts of Scotland. It was a very confusing time for them.

A lot of the men at Winfield, when they got there, had only a hazy idea of where they were. Large numbers of them were illiterate, having had no formal schooling, so they were unable to write to
their families to tell them they were safe. Being unable to read or write in Polish, they were effectively cut off from their loved ones. That sense of intense isolation was compounded by another
cruel quirk of fate. In the camps many men did learn to read and write – but in English, not Polish. Thus they spoke Polish, but could not read or write in their native language. It was a
strange, convoluted situation created by wartime.

Living in limbo, as they were, Wojtek’s presence did much to lift their spirits. In 1946, billeted in postwar rural Scotland, they were stateless, homeless and penniless; the
only things they owned were a few meagre possessions in a bag – and a bear.

In other parts of the country, such as the west of Scotland, where the religious divide between Protestant and Roman Catholic was a long-running problem, there was a certain reserve between
Polish incomers and locals. However, living in displaced persons camps, the Poles were largely out of sight, if not out of mind, and they didn’t impinge too greatly on local
sensibilities.

In the Borders, attitudes were different. There were no Roman Catholic churches in the area so Masses were held at the camp by visiting priests. But Winfield Camp was located among a farming
community, and if there is one thing that commands universal respect in agricultural societies, it is hard physical work. Our new Polish neighbours were good workers. Many of the servicemen came
from an agricultural background. They were exceptionally good at working with horses, although they had difficulty in fathoming the completely different way that harnesses were fastened in
Scotland. They were also skilled at leatherwork – fast vanishing in agricultural Scotland even then – and were adept at mending harnesses.

While the Poles offered the local population agricultural skills and a willingness to work, the bear offered friendship and joy. Being country-bred, no one – adult or child – had
ordinary domestic pets. Around farms, all animals were required to earn their keep. There was no sentimentality about them. If a dog was too old to work, or took fits, it was put down.

As a child, I had experience of how creatures from the wild could be brought to accept a human environment and tamed, if only briefly. Indeed, it was something of a school
sport, like marbles and conkers: every year, during the breeding season, my school pals and I would catch young jackdaws, having tracked them down to their nests in rabbit burrows. When
they were half-grown but couldn’t yet fly, we would remove them from their nests and put them in cardboard boxes, usually old shoeboxes, with air holes punched through the top. Then we would
hand-feed the chicks worms, grubs and scraps.

In a remarkably short time, we were able to go cycling with the young birds perched on our bike handlebars, enjoying the air fluttering through their feathers. Within a month or so the
jackdaws’ pinion feathers would grow in and strengthen and when that happened, with their newfound maturity, they became restless. So off they flew. The pet jackdaw season was over, to be
replaced by the next childhood pastime.

Wojtek, of course, was in a different category. He was an ambassador for his Polish friends, and forged links with the Borders community. But he was also an animal unique in the annals of
warfare. He had never ever been trained for any of the tasks he had carried out voluntarily with his companions under shot and shell; he considered himself their equal in all respects, and had just
helped out when the notion took him. That was a very strange state of affairs for an essentially wild animal, and ran contrary to the accepted opinions of many animal behaviourists. It was not
thought possible for a bear to be imprinted with ‘human’ characteristics. Yet in terms of temperament and personality, Wojtek was very much an amalgam of both.

It was Wojtek who drove me to research the role of animals in warfare. Probably the first animals to be so employed were elephants. Their use in battle is recorded
in
Sanskrit writings found in the Indus Valley dating back to around 1100
BC
. War elephants were deployed like tanks in battles throughout India. The slimmed-down basic
‘model’ would have only a mahout aboard its neck, guiding it into goring and trampling the enemy. More elaborate usage saw the war elephants equipped with armoured breastplates and
headgear. Some elephants wore clanging bells or had spears attached to their tusks and others had a military-style howdah strapped to their backs, filled with warriors who rained down arrows and
spears on the luckless combatants below.

The ‘technology’ was soon exported to other countries and used to considerable effect. For many centuries the war elephant was probably the most effective fighting machine available
and its military value did not diminish until new weaponry, in the shape of the cannon, arrived on the battlefields of India.

In more modern times many other animals have been trained to participate in warfare, including mules, horses, dogs, camels, pigeons, canaries, dolphins and sea lions. Millions of them died in
the service of their country. In the First World War, even the tiny glow-worm was pressed into service in the fetid trenches of France. Soldiers used them to read their maps in the darkness.

Horses made the greatest sacrifices in the military lunacies of the First World War which saw cavalry charges against embedded machine guns persist until as late as 1918. The generals were as
profligate with their animals as they were with their troops. It has been estimated that some 8 million horses died in the First World War. They did not all perish in the pointless carnage of
cavalry charges, of course. The majority died bringing supplies to the front because
they were deemed more reliable than mechanised transport and required relatively little
maintenance. Quite a lot received no maintenance at all. They starved to death because there were no rations for them. Tens of thousands died of exposure while many more succumbed to disease and
injury.

Dogs, too, were an essential part of the war effort. They were used as runners, carrying messages from the front line back through the enormous web of trenches to army headquarters. Demand for
messenger dogs became so great that every police force in the UK was ordered to send strays to the War Dog Training School and the public was encouraged to donate its own pets for training –
which they did in very large numbers. They were known by the troops as ‘summer dogs’: ‘summer this’ and ‘summer that’. In the Second World War dogs were trained
by Britain in a completely new and more sophisticated direction: they were parachuted behind enemy lines, with their handlers, on rescue missions. Their job was to sniff out explosives and find
personnel trapped in the rubble of bombed buildings.

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:

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.

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.