Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II

by Croke, Vicki Constantine

  First, they had laboriously waded through nearly fifty miles of thick sludge. “Each stage of that agonising trek was about ten miles,” Williams wrote. “At every step Bandoola sank two or three feet deep into the mud. Each foot he lifted made a loud sucking noise and even his gigantic powers were sorely taxed.”

  Then came the river. Progress was slow. The churning water was level with Bandoola’s chest, and the animal had to pause before each stride, feeling the boulder-strewn riverbed with his feet for his next purchase. Often, he would freeze in place for what seemed like “an eternity of time in the middle of the angry waters,” as the current sloshed over his back, soaking Williams and the two men. Then Bandoola would find a foothold and lunge forward again. “His massive head and tusks ploughed a passage through the water like the nose of a submarine,” Williams wrote years later in one of the several memoirs he would produce. “Riding on his powerful back brought home my own fragility.”

  Precarious as his situation was, Williams could not keep his eyes open. The fever pulled him back into oblivion, as, step-by-step, Bandoola made his way. By the time they reached the far shore, Williams was unconscious. Aung Net and his helper pulled him from the basket and dragged him to a hut. There were still maybe a hundred miles to go between them and a station with a doctor. Once he was awake, Williams would have to make a tough decision: whether to travel overland through impenetrable virgin forest, or by water, shooting down the dangerous rapids. Either way, he needed to reach the more populated banks of the mighty Chindwin, the river where, it seemed an eternity before, Williams had first met Bandoola and his life among elephants had begun.

  CHAPTER 2

  INTO THE JUNGLE

  ON A CRISP NOVEMBER DAY IN 1920, JAMES HOWARD WILLIAMS, called “Billy” by friends and “Jim” by his family, saw the Chindwin River for the first time. The waterway originated far to the north near the Himalayas, in the wild Hukawng Valley, and stretched for 750 miles, eventually spilling out into the even greater Irrawaddy River near Mandalay, Burma. The Chindwin, the history books and magazines promised, ran through savage country where villagers still practiced head-hunting, performed human sacrifices to appease the spirits of rice production, and could transform themselves into ghost cats. Famous explorers wrote of remote and little-known corners of the area that harbored barbaric tribes. It was enough to scare any of the new British recruits routinely hired by the logging companies. But Billy was different. Striking a match to one of his Players cigarettes and looking out over the water and the limitless jungle beyond, he was amused by such flights of imagination. A forest teeming with monsters? He knew better and had seen worse.

  Tall, clean-shaven, and built like a loping hound, Williams may have looked young in his freshly pressed khakis, but he had been through the kind of hell that quickly burns away a man’s innocence. Months earlier, on January 26, 1920, the British Army had demobilized him with the rank of captain. During four years of brutal, bitter fighting in the Great War as part of Devonshire Regiment, or the “Bloody Eleventh,” Billy had led other men into battle and served in several battlefronts in a wide sweep across North Africa, the Middle East, India, and Afghanistan. In the deserts of Egypt, he was part of the Camel Corps, facing the jihad raised by the Senussi, a group of Muslim guerilla fighters. Along the Tigris, he had been a bombing officer engaged in ghastly battles with the Ottoman Army as part of the Mesopotamia (Iraq) Campaign, in which close to one hundred thousand soldiers from the British and British Indian Armies died. Finally, in 1919, he endured his last two assignments. The first brought him into the turmoil of Lahore, India, where martial law was declared to quell rioting against the British. And later that year he fought hand to hand against fierce, well-armed tribesmen in Waziristan, a remote mountainous outpost on the border with Afghanistan.

  A gallant soldier and sensitive soul, J. H. “Billy” Williams was certain that the forests of Burma would offer tranquillity, adventure, and, most of all, elephants—an antidote to all he had experienced on the battlefields of the Great War.

  He knew he was lucky to be alive. Nearly a million British soldiers had died in the Great War, and those who survived were forever changed. Some obviously so—faces half blown off, hands trembling from shell shock, trouser legs folded neatly and tacked up where a leg should be. Others carried the trauma inside.

  During World War I, James Howard Williams (center) served in several battlefronts in a long, wide sweep across North Africa, the Middle East, India, and Afghanistan.

  Billy Williams would never write or speak about his experiences in the war, for he had a lifelong tendency to lock away his deepest emotions, especially the painful ones. The less he talked about something, the closer it was to his heart. It wasn’t in his nature to dwell on the darkness of combat. He wouldn’t mention what ailed him, only what might cure him. When he came home, he said that the vision of Burma’s lonely jungles, filled with wild animals, called to him. It was no surprise to his family. As social as he so often appeared, they knew that solitude was his true bent. He could do without the parties and pranks he was known for in school; in fact, he truly thrived in the kind of isolated wilderness that would turn other men mad.

  His opportunity to do just that came from a chance meeting shortly before being discharged. An army buddy he was drinking with had a connection to a teak logging company and suggested an adventure in Burma. Williams fell in love with the idea even before locating the country on a map. Clinching it was the mention of elephants. “My way has been from a very early age the companionship of animals,” he once wrote.

  His fondness extended to most creatures, but it was individual animals who affected him most deeply. He recognized their distinct personalities even when few others did. First, there was Prince, his childhood donkey, with whom he would wander the moors, hitching him up to a jingle, or carriage. “I developed a longing for big open spaces,” Williams wrote, “and used to talk it over with old Prince who seemed to understand.” The donkey, he said, “was the first animal with which I enjoyed a joke.” When he left Prince to go off to boarding school, he was bereft, feeling that the separation created a “blank in life.”

  In wartime, he “really fell in love” with his camel named Frying Pan. And of more than one dog, he would simply say, “We loved each other dearly.” When circumstances such as school or war uprooted him, the worst part was saying good-bye to a pet. It created an emotional tear he believed could be mended only by time and the company of another animal. But an elephant? Was he really up to that kind of challenge?

  Instinctively, he felt the answer was yes. A jungle full of elephants sounded like the ideal corrective for what he had witnessed on the battlefield. He dashed off a letter to the logging company.

  It was perfect timing: The war had thinned the ranks of forest men who roamed the jungles overseeing logging work at far-flung camps for the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. At the moment, “Bombine,” as the company was nicknamed, was in a recruiting frenzy. And Williams was just its kind of man. The big Burma-based British companies liked to fish from different pools. Rival Steel Brothers, trading in rice, teak, and oil, sought candidates from the wealthy, elite schools. Bombay Burmah, founded by six Scottish brothers in 1863, specialized in teak, tea, cotton, and oil. And it recruited from universities, with a bias toward athletic over academic skill. “The life is a roughish outdoor one,” the company had written of the position Williams was being considered for. “A robust constitution, trustworthiness, sobriety, and ability to learn languages are the chief qualifications wanted.”

  Williams was subjected to a rigorous vetting process. These firms required applicants to undergo a withering interview, a written examination, and a physical at their London offices. Candidates also had to provide stellar personal references. Williams had it all. Just under six feet tall, he was fit, smart, indefatigable, unflappable, good with languages (having easily picked up Hindustani in the service), and, by all accounts, of “good moral character.”

/>   His official offer came via a letter dated June 30, 1920, which began, “We have the pleasure of engaging you on behalf of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Ltd.” Passage out would be paid, starting salary was four hundred rupees per month, and he would be provided with housing. The one-year contract could be extended pending review.

  At home, his joy over the offer was not shared. Every day during the war, British newspapers had printed long lists of the dead, and like all parents of soldiers, Jimmy’s had anxiously scanned them, praying they would not find his name. He had returned not only alive, but, just as miraculously, whole. Yet he was set on leaving again. His father, who had settled down as a country squire after his own wandering days in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, and Spain, wanted at least one of his three sons to succeed him. The elder, Nick, was a lawyer with a firm in Calcutta, while Tom, the younger, was headed for a career as a mining engineer in India. Jim was the only hope. So his father tried bribing him: He offered to buy three adjacent holdings, at formidable expense, to set Jim up as a farmer of means. When he made his pitch, he told his son not to answer right away. “Go down to Penamel cove, have a swim, and let me know when you get back,” he said. Jim sprinted along the familiar fields that led to the shore, and plunged into the icy waves. He returned, dripping wet and gritty with sea salt, carrying the answer his father had feared. On July 7, 1920, he signed the Bombay Burmah contract accepting the terms offered.

  WEEKS LATER, ON SEPTEMBER 23, 1920, he boarded the cargo-passenger liner Bhamo in Liverpool with a one-way ticket to Rangoon. It was a mild, hazy Thursday without enough wind to blow away the curtain of fog that clung to the horizon. The ship was fairly empty—just eighty-three passengers—as it was still monsoon season in Burma, and travel between the two countries tended to flow westward.

  As Williams found his cabin and stowed his grip, he was pining already for Cornwall. He knew that because of the company’s home leave schedule, he wouldn’t see his family for at least three years, possibly five or more. But he was also thrilling at the prospect of the coming adventure. The war had revealed to him his fearlessness, independence, and recognition that his happiness was of his own making. His old roles—Cornish loner, well-liked high school student, tough soldier, obedient son—no longer applied. He would forge a new identity: elephant wallah. It sounded electrifying, even if he didn’t know exactly what it entailed.

  Williams, a fearless adventurer with boundless energy, was eager to explore the mysterious jungles of Burma.

  Once on board, Williams, realizing he would spend most of the next year tucked away in a remote forest, made the most of his time meeting young women at dances and playing games such as skittles, a top-deck version of bowling. By the time the Bhamo approached the south coast of Burma and the mouth of the Rangoon River a few weeks later, the young suitor had a stack of addresses, which would serve as a romantic lifeline for his lonely journey up-country.

  The five-hour-long approach to the capital on the silty waters of the Rangoon River sliced a wide brown ribbon through the lush green land, and, standing on deck, Williams saw miles of tall kaing grass, patches of mangrove swamp, and occasional huts surrounded by crops. On the horizon, ten miles upriver, he could just make out the golden dome of the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda rising high above the city. The paddy fields began to diminish and in their place mills, sheds, refineries, factory chimneys, storage tanks, and industrial buildings lined the shore. Williams could even see elephants working the big logs at the mills. Once the ship pulled up to the wharves, and with the gangway in place, throngs of visitors and “shore boys” looking for work hauling luggage stormed aboard.

  The offices of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, Williams discovered, were just steps away from the dock. During the short trip to the office on Strand Road, the main thoroughfare that ran along the river, he had a whole world to take in: The wide street was impossibly congested, filled with bicycles, cars, rickshaws, and bullock carts. Colorful buses, crammed with people and poultry, were decorated with images of animals—snakes or tigers or elephants—to identify their individual routes, the way numbers or addresses did back home. Pedestrians—and not just Burmans, but many Chinese and Indians and Westerners, too—were everywhere. Dressed in bright colors, local men and women both wore long traditional skirts, the women topping them with spotless white jackets and flowers in their hair.

  In no time, Williams was standing outside the imposing colonnaded white Bombay Burmah building and soon escorted into the cool of a teak-paneled office, a matting fan swinging rhythmically overhead. The manager of the firm described what would be expected of Williams in the jungles of that portion of the country referred to as “Upper Burma.” He did not sugarcoat any part of the message—just the opposite, in fact. This was the company’s last chance to scare off any unsound hires before investing any more in them. It was noted that only 4 percent of Europeans who chose the life of a teak man completed their full service. And that didn’t even take into consideration the recruits who never started the journey—those who lost their nerve the day they were due to sail from home.

  The company knew that most of the arrivals would be gone within months. Loneliness may have been one of the most common complaints, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. Some of the working elephants were notorious killers. And the men frequently died from accidents or tropical disease. Recruits could become unhinged by the remoteness of the forest, their fear of the elephants, or the jungle sounds at night. There was no way of knowing in advance which men would have the peculiar, undefined traits that brought success in such outposts.

  The Bombay Burmah manager in Rangoon generally spent about a half hour with each new man, providing a comprehensive overview of the work ahead. There was a lot to say: Williams was joining the biggest company in one of the country’s biggest industries. At the time, Burma, under British rule, produced 75 percent of the planet’s teak. And Bombay Burmah was the top “teak-cutting” operation. The hard, elegant wood, resistant to the elements and impervious to destructive insects such as termites, was highly sought after. The timber even contains a type of oil that prevents metal corrosion. Particularly treasured by the Royal Navy, it was used in boat-building and as decking for ships around the world.

  Tectona grandis did not grow in large plots like orange groves, but was scattered among many kinds of trees. As a National Geographic from the era noted, “a teak forest 10,000 square miles in extent may be capable of producing only seven or eight thousand trees a year.”

  The government’s forest department was charged with deciding which trees should be extracted. Those eligible for harvesting were killed by girdling them: A two-inch ring of sapwood (the outer, younger wood) was removed from the circumference. Then the tree would be ignored for two or three years while it died and dried out. This was a vital step, since fresh “green” teak sinks, and logs needed to be transported by floating down rivers. As one British educational pamphlet explained, “The rivers of Burma with their vast network of feeder streams make possible the economical extraction, sometimes over distances of 1,200 miles and more, of teak and other waterborne forest produce to the sawmilling and shipping centres of Rangoon and Moulmein.”

  Because the country had few roads and railways, an army of elephants would drag the harvested logs to waterways. Rudyard Kipling described the process in his famous poem “Mandalay” as “Elephints a-pilin’ teak / In the sludgy, squdgy creek.”

  Elephants. Finally. Billy Williams listened attentively when the subject turned to these animals. In non-monsoon seasons, the manager explained, timber was hauled by elephants to dormant, dry creeks. Then, when the rains arrived in the summer, stirring the tributaries to life, the lumber would rise with the flowing water and begin its journey to larger rivers such as the Irrawaddy. Hurtling at high speed, the logs threatened the lives of anyone foolish enough to enter the water. On the big rivers, trunks would be bundled into rafts of about 125 and guided by five-man crews. Then, from the Irr
awaddy, the barges would be steered to the Rangoon River to float down to the mills of the capital city, where “their contact with primitive things would be ended.” Given all the variables of the monsoons, the mountains, and even the men who worked the forests, it could take anywhere from five to twenty years for a log to become a milled plank.

  Sitting behind an ornate carved desk and glaring through his old-fashioned pince-nez, the manager asked, “What made you think you were cut out for this sort of life, Williams?”

  Billy Williams could see that this was a well-worn tactic meant to intimidate new hires.

  “Well, sir.… I imagine it’s difficult to know if one is until one’s been out there some time, but there were all sorts of things that appealed to me. I’m fond of animals for one thing … then the open air life … sense of adventure.”

  The manager cut him off abruptly, “In fact the usual romantic illusions that bring all you youngsters out East, eh?”

  Williams said, “I suppose so, sir.…”

  “Hmm. Well, there’s nothing wrong in that, but because they are illusions, you’re on trial only, for one year. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Williams said, understanding that the manager wasn’t really interested in his thoughts. “It seems very fair to both sides.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” the manager noted sarcastically.

  Williams learned that he would be under the thumb of a boss living in the forests northwest of the capital, along the Chindwin River. His own territory would be near his superior’s in the Myittha River valley.