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

  Tiny calves suffered high mortality rates at camps where their working mothers were forced to neglect them.

  It was a lucky calf who survived, and Bandoola was nothing if not lucky. The spirits of the forest, the nats, favored him, the uzis always said. That good fortune began at birth, when Po Toke had taken an interest in him. Po Toke not only cared for the baby; against policy he made sure Ma Shwe stayed healthy and unencumbered enough to dote on her calf. But he had to do it surreptitiously. He subtly steered her away from the dangerous work zones and placed her with teams who maintained lighter loads. It would not be easy to conceal for long, especially from his fellow uzis. So he needed everyone in camp to believe, as he did, that Bandoola was exceptional. With the help of the others, and by converting the pretty daughter of the man who owned the elephants to his cause, he had a chance. In a country devoted to Buddhism and mindful of the pantheon of nat spirits, his best bet was to seek a special spiritual status for the animal.

  He traveled eighty miles to consult a pone nar, or astrologer, hoping to have Bandoola designated a white elephant, for these sacred animals were part of the very soul of Burma. After all, it was in the form of a white elephant that the Buddha chose to enter the world. White elephants came to symbolize all that is pure, strong, and celestial.

  Once confirmed by special holy experts, a white elephant would be honored as the earthly embodiment of the universe’s gods and godlike beings, and transported to the capital in a royal barge, accompanied by musicians and dancers. There he would live in his own palace, lavishly adorned by items blessed by monks: bangles, headdresses, necklaces, velvet robes, tusk rings of gold, and harnesses studded with precious gems.

  The blessings spilled over, in the form of titles and rewards, onto the lucky jungle men who provided these animals. So Po Toke fantasized as he looked at Bandoola. In his favor were two important factors. It was said in Burma that a white elephant emerging from a bath would appear to have red skin, not black as on most other elephants. Bandoola did have a purplish-pink glow when doused with water. And, best of all, in the stiff dark tuft of Bandoola’s tail, there were four white hairs.

  The pone nar agreed that Bandoola might qualify. He told Po Toke to observe the elephant closely as he grew, and he provided auspicious dates to mark for Bandoola’s training. He instructed him on specific rituals and offerings to appease the nats. Armed with this chance for sanctification, Po Toke returned to the village, conscripted the support of the other uzis, and followed the astrologer’s calendar.

  When Bandoola was five, Po Toke built a teak-log holding pen for the calf and tried out his gentling process, rather than “breaking” the animal as was done to wild adults. Bandoola would do anything to get a sweet treat, while threats and abuse seemed fairly ineffective. So Po Toke avoided punishments and focused on rewards. He expanded on the commands Bandoola had learned by observing Ma Shwe. The young elephant quickly began to learn more complicated directives about moving logs that only much older elephants knew.

  The method was such an immediate success that Po Toke’s status rose among the elephant men. Soon after, when all the elephants of his camp were sold to a teak firm, Po Toke married the boss’s daughter and became a high-ranking elephant man with the buyers. He and his wife, Ma Pyoo, followed the elephants to their new assignment in the western part of the country where he continued his work with Bandoola. Though he was clearly a great bull in the making, Bandoola’s conditioning was far from over. He still needed time to mature before he was assigned the heaviest log work.

  Po Toke hoped that Williams, the new boss, would understand his methods. He did. More than that, Williams realized that Po Toke was a master mahout, the kind of elephant expert Williams hoped to become. For Williams, the proof of Po Toke’s gifts was Bandoola, “a rare elephant in his generation, born in captivity and educated to man’s service not through cruelty and the breaking of his spirit, but by the indomitable patience of Po Toke. He represented a new generation of elephants.”

  Bandoola’s singularity was made plain by the entry in his ledger book next to “Identification scars”: “nil.” The tusker was the only unmarked working elephant Williams had come across. It was something he wanted to replicate—in fact, to establish as the standard.

  Williams’s vague thoughts about elephant care were beginning to crystallize. In Bandoola, he could see the direction of his life and career. He would make sure to visit Po Toke’s camp as often as he could. To make the lives of elephants better he would need an ally in the company. Unfortunately, just as this spark hit, it was time to report back to Harding.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE BURNING BOSS

  WILLIAMS LOATHED THE IDEA OF LEAVING THE FOREST, ESPECIALLY to return to Harding’s camp. “Naturally,” he wrote, “when I arrived I got the greeting I expected: sarcastic remarks.” The first issue the old man confronted him about was one that seemed to have taken place a lifetime ago: the death of Pin Wa. Harding taunted him, saying Pin Wa must have been crushed under the weight of Williams’s kit, overstuffed with the novice’s gadgets, clothes, and books.

  Williams had seen young male elephants in the logging camps shove back if bumped by another male. After three months among the bulls, he was primed for this conversation.

  “I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did,” Williams replied, looking squarely at Harding, “considering that her liver was riddled with flukes and her heart was so enlarged.”

  Harding wheeled on him. “How do you know how big an elephant’s heart ought to be?”

  “I shot a wild tusker that Tha Yauk told me was forty years old, and I did a post-mortem on him in order to see how the organs of a healthy elephant compared with hers,” Williams said. The heart of a healthy animal should be about fifty pounds.

  Surprisingly, the old curmudgeon did not react with fury. In fact, Williams noticed that he actually looked pleased.

  Though Harding did admire Williams’s seriousness and inquiry about elephants, the shooting of an elephant on its own wasn’t something that made him happy. “Don’t make a practice of it,” he said. Williams quickly discovered that Harding, as crusty and unsentimental as he seemed, had no patience with so-called big game hunters. In fact, “he felt far more sympathy with any creature which was part of his jungle than with any new arrival.”

  It would take Williams only a short time to agree. After the first elephant he shot, there would be at least two more: another in the interest of science, and one a rampaging elephant. By the time he shot the rogue, he was a changed man. The action had been necessary, but once it was done, he dropped his rifle, doubled over, and vomited with fear and remorse. Just a little over a year in Burma, he would be done with such behavior for good. Later in life, Williams said it was hard for him to believe there was ever a time when “I allowed the thrill of big game shooting to dim my eyes to the fact that [the elephants] were God’s own.” He said his only consolation was that it actually helped him develop “as deep a reverence for the jungles and all in them as anyone possibly could.” Ultimately, he came to feel that big game hunting was a product of fear, not courage.

  It was all part of making sense of his life in Burma. Things were coming together so quickly that on his return from his very first jungle tour, he had one-upped Harding. That night when darkness fell, the familiar two bottles of black label whiskey were set out with glasses. Something had shifted, though. There was peace. Williams looked across the table at his boss, who was settled in his camp chair, his very English face looking even ruddier in the glow of the flames. “That evening I became a companion with whom he could enjoy rational conversation,” Williams wrote, “instead of an interloper who had to be bullied and kept in his place.” In particular, “the way I had pleased him was by my interest in the elephants.”

  Moved by the new sense of camaraderie, Williams showed Harding the sketches in his diary and some of the feathers of the jungle fowl he had shot for food. The evening was so convivial that Harding insis
ted on gin before they graduated to double rations of whiskey.

  Williams had not forgotten his vow to drink Harding under the table. So he matched the old man, glass for glass.

  After several hours, Harding slumped unconscious in his chair. The moment the boss’s chin touched his chest, Williams felt unexpectedly sorry for the crumpled figure. To avoid embarrassing the senior man, he slipped away to his tent, securing the canvas flap open so he could watch the snoring figure from his cot. Harding looked small, old, vulnerable. Finally, the dozing man shuddered and then stood. But rather than heading to his bed, he stumbled toward the campfire and toppled over into the flames. Williams sprang from his tent, reaching his boss just as he was reflexively rolling away. The skin of Harding’s arm was already charred bloody and black. Williams pulled his boss to his feet.

  Now nose-to-nose with Harding, Williams took in his sour, boozy breath. The old man spit out his words: “What the hell are you doing? Do you insinuate that I am drunk?”

  Williams was shocked. “No. But you’ve burned your arm badly.”

  Told to mind his own business and get back in the tent, Williams stomped away, shouting: “Well, if you fall again, I shall let you sizzle.”

  For the next several days, camp was a sullen, silent place. It must have galled him, but eventually Harding was forced to request Williams’s help in dressing his burned limb. As the two men sat close, with Williams ministering to the tender, blistered skin, the fragile friendship began to knit back together.

  About this time, Williams found out by chance that he had passed his first probation. Harding never mentioned it, but the recruit saw his note to headquarters, which merely said that Williams “would do.”

  A few days later, as Williams prepared to leave again for his forest travels, Harding pulled him aside for a talk over drinks. Forest assistants became invaluable by focusing on specific aspects of the work, he said. And it had occurred to him some time before that no one had taken up a serious study of elephant management. That had always been a Burmese expertise, not a British one. Clearly, Williams had the interest and talent to fill the gap.

  Here was his ally. Williams was gratified to discover that Harding wasn’t as oblivious as he liked to appear. The creatures who fascinated Williams would be his life’s work and the route to something else he yearned for: advancement in the company. His ambition and passion would be on the same trajectory. He could now establish a humane standard of care for elephants and outline what needed to change most urgently. Williams spoke at length about his ideas.

  He wanted to overhaul the system from cradle to grave—starting with the way elephants were recruited into the logging life. He hoped to create a school to gradually induct the young ones, already born into captivity, and even to establish a hospital to ensure better doctoring.

  When he finished, there was silence. Harding poured himself another drink, paused, and then spoke. As long as Williams rationally made his case, and documented proof of his success, Harding said, “I’ll back you.” That was vital because there was sure to be a battle ahead. “You’re challenging accepted methods,” Harding said. “Some people won’t like that.” In fact, the boss figured, the campaign might make or break the young recruit. He’d better be prepared. The example of Bandoola went only so far. Williams had to demonstrate the success was repeatable. If he could do that, Harding said, then “the days of kheddaring will be numbered.”

  Over the next months, Williams campaigned for his ideas, taking every opportunity to seek out opponents as well as supporters, and tell them, “If you saw Bandoola—he’s the only domesticated elephant we’ve got—Bandoola works smoothly. He uses his brain. He knows exactly what to do and when to do it. The kheddared elephants rush the job. They’re not skilled.”

  The gentler concepts that Williams believed in, he said, “appeared to the senior men in Bombine as sentimental, unpractical, uneconomic.” He knew he wouldn’t change their minds until he could prove that his plan was financially beneficial.

  So he worked out some figures. While baby elephants were being thrown away to die, the company was spending a fortune obtaining grown elephants. In a single decade, it would purchase nearly two thousand mature workers for Burma logging alone. And each one cost anywhere between $500 and $3,000, as much as $180,000 today. Meanwhile, what would it cost the company to keep the babies alive? Very little. The elephants primarily fed themselves, so the only expenditures would be from making up for the loss of output from mothers who would temporarily be given lighter workloads, and the pay for extra uzis as the calves grew. The price tag would still be less than it would be for buying kheddared animals. And these elephants would be healthier and more trustworthy. It was, he said, “at the same time practical and humanitarian.” As for creating an infirmary and improving veterinary care, making a case was easy—healthy animals produced more work than sick ones.

  Williams had worked it all out on paper. Now it was time for Harding to go to bat for him.

  CHAPTER 8

  SEX, CRICKET, AND BLUE CHEESE

  WHEN WILLIAMS NEXT RENDEZVOUSED WITH HARDING, THE boss was waiting with a reproach. This time it was about the mail. In his loneliness, Billy was corresponding with every young woman he knew from London to Rangoon. The bundle of responses was taking up too much space in the company’s green canvas mailbag, which was shared by the two men. Harding wanted more room for the truly important items in life: whiskey, cigarettes, and the specialty cheeses, including blue Cheshire, he regularly requisitioned.

  To be in camp with Harding, Williams knew, was to suffer days at the mercy of his sharp tongue. But now there was a new wrinkle: Harding asked him to play cricket. It was clear this wouldn’t be just an amusement. First of all, while Harding waited, Williams and the elephant men in camp were directed to hack out a playing field in the jungle. That finished, the tense match between Englishmen began. Right away, Harding was furious that Williams jokingly claimed to be left-handed: “What the hell do you think you’re going to do, mow corn? Stand up and bat right-handed like a gentleman.” When Williams took a real whack at the ball they were using, sending it deep into the shaded forest, Harding’s face went “purple with rage,” and he fumed, “Do you think tennis balls grow on trees, you idiot?” Worst of all, it turned out that the old man was actually quite good, “a well-known bat in county cricket.” Williams would later recall, “Cricket has never been my favourite game; but my fanatic loathing of it dates from that afternoon.”

  When the rains washed out their cricket playing, Williams was overjoyed. But Harding was undaunted. He had a new sport for them: Northern Quoits, a game like horseshoes played with a steel discus set. If the discus landed with the convex side down, Harding explained, “that’s what we call a ‘lady,’ but you’re too young to know why.” After some play with the discuses, Williams said, “I don’t mind admitting I’ve never seen so many ladies lying on their backs.”

  “Nor have I,” Harding said, “and I’m over fifty.”

  “This I remember as a very important afternoon,” Williams wrote years later, “because in it I had made Willie smile once and laugh once. It was the beginning of the thawing process, almost as gradual as the melting of the polar ice-cap, but at least a start. And as I got better at the game, so Willie in his unbending way unbent.”

  On this trip, Williams led his boss to his favorite place, Bandoola’s camp. It was becoming nearly a second home to Williams. The men arrived early and watched the logging elephants as they neared camp for their afternoon baths. Williams spotted Bandoola immediately. They knew each other by sight now, and Williams often brought the elephant tamarind balls as treats. Bandoola would take them gently from Williams’s hand, curling the end of his trunk around the offering and then popping it into his mouth. He’d then chew slowly, his mouth making loud smacking noises, his eyelids remaining half closed. Williams would pat the front of his trunk or scratch the ridged underside of it. The thickness and weight of Bandoola’s trunk, bigge
r than both of Williams’s thighs put together, always astounded. The bull himself seemed larger every time they met. While so many things could befall these working elephants, Bandoola was thriving. Harding wouldn’t have any criticisms of him in the lineup.

  But then Williams saw another big tusker from a different camp. He had a large abscess on his chest that had clearly gone untreated for some time. Williams figured that Harding would probably erupt over this, though when the old man saw the swelling, he was silent. Williams walked in front of the elephant and tapped his lower jaw so he would raise his head. He touched the abscess, which, he wrote, was “twice the size of my fist.” Still, Harding said nothing. As Williams ordered a knife be brought to him, Harding walked away and sat down on a log to watch.

  “I stabbed the abscess with the dagger,” Williams wrote, “and the pus poured down the animal’s chest and foreleg in a stream. I cleaned the abscess out with my fingers, then syringed it with a dilute disinfectant, which I also used for washing the animal’s leg and my own hands and forearm.” It was fast and good work. Williams proudly strolled over to Harding, figuring “that if I had not earned any praise, at least I had avoided a rocket.” But Harding moved away, saying they would discuss the matter later. That evening, the two men sat down for their evening ritual. As Harding sipped his first whiskey, Po Toke appeared and fell to his knees before him in submission. Williams, who felt equally responsible for the abscess, wouldn’t let him face the firing squad alone, and knelt beside him, an extraordinary act for a British man here.