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

  Working with Po Toke, Williams drafted an outline of an ongoing program. The calves, he proposed, should have about two years of this kind of coaching: learning to follow the instructions of the uzis—including the basics of foot commands behind the ear to turn right, or a movement of thighs commanding a left turn. At about the age of eight, they would go to work carrying light loads as traveling elephants. At first it might be old kerosene tins filled with water and the blanket roll of their uzi, or a small kah. This was elephant graduate school. On expeditions, they would teach the young elephants skills they would use later in logging. Gathering logs for the night fire was a natural. Their uzis would also teach them the names of the pieces of equipment, having them hand—that is, trunk—up each item as they learned to distinguish the words for ax or chain.

  Despite the restrictions on their lives, even working elephants managed to form complex social bonds. Williams was fascinated by the subtlety and strength of these connections.

  All the time the animals would be growing in height and bulk. By the end of their traveling years they would be capable of handling five-hundred-pound loads on their backs and ready to graduate to logging work if it suited them.

  For Po Toke, that inaugural school session marked the first time in his and Bandoola’s lives that the two were not together. He worried, and with good reason. The bull was entering a dangerous age when males often feel compelled to fight with larger, more mature opponents for mating rights. And Bandoola was sure to be one of those tuskers who wouldn’t back down from a challenge.

  CHAPTER 10

  DRUNK ON TESTOSTERONE

  ON A SWELTERING APRIL AFTERNOON IN 1922, WILLIAMS, HIS bush shirt soaked through with sweat, was crouched down in the shade between boulders in a parched riverbed. He could almost hear the heat, not as sound, but as the absence of it—there was no whisper of wind; only silence from the narrow, slow trickle of water running beneath the granite rocks. Traveling with Kya Sine, a hunter hired by the logging company, he had hiked in what seemed like slow motion for five miles outside of camp, through forest and now along the rock-strewn bed. They were tracking Bandoola—missing, and, for the first time in the elephant’s life, fully in the grip of a mysterious condition called musth. Bandoola was right on schedule, as the uzis found that most males began their musth cycles in their twenties. The yearly periods of musth were weaker in young elephants and intensified with maturity. The strength of musth also depends on physical condition, so the better fed and stronger a bull is, the more explosive his musth cycle.

  Bandoola had been on the loose for five days, his uzi unable to capture him. The men in camp were in a panic. Musth bulls pick fights, and when one was nearby, no one was safe. The first precaution was to gather the rest of the elephants in camp. Next was to contain the bull.

  As Williams and the hunter caught their breath, they considered their options. They had begun the day with no plan other than to find Bandoola. They had to see him to know how far along he was in the cycle and what his state of mind was.

  Even though Williams had been immersed in the world of elephants, he had not seen any tuskers he knew well at the peak of musth—often described as “a form of madness or possession.” Impervious to pain, intractable, and reckless, bull elephants in musth go berserk with their own virility. No handler, if he could help it, would get within trunk-length of these animals. In working camps there were methods of dealing with the condition—primarily keeping the animals chained, and starving them to reduce the length and power of the cycle.

  Musth had been recognized in captive bull elephants for thousands of years. The ancient Sanskrit manual on all things elephant, the Matangalila, spoke of it in accurate terms: “Excitement, swiftness, odor, love passion, complete florescence of the body, wrath, prowess, and fearlessness are declared to be the eight excellences of musth.” Combativeness, chemical signaling, overwhelming sexual urges. The old text got it right. Musth would be recognized in African elephants with scientific certitude only in 1981.

  The term musth was derived from the Urdu word for intoxication—appropriate for this state in which a male is drunk on his own testosterone. During musth, levels of the hormone can increase to fifty, or even a hundred, times normal.

  When it comes to sex, musth gives elephants an edge over rivals. It’s not just humans who fear a musth bull—other bulls do, too. Bigger, stronger males not in musth will generally defer to a smaller one who is. Bulls have even been observed running in the opposite direction when just catching a whiff of a musth bull. Receptive females, on the other hand, are attracted to them.

  The uzis, who made it their business to understand it, recognized four stages of musth: Initially there is a loss of appetite and an indifference to commands. The temporal glands swell slightly. Next comes what the men called “upper musth”: the glands secrete a watery substance. The penis is erect a good amount of the time and occasionally jerks upward, touching the bull’s belly. Then the temporal glands truly increase in size, and stream fluid. A whitish discharge drips from the fully extended penis. This is “lower musth.”

  Finally, the animal reaches what the uzis called “the musth drinking stage.” Now the temporal fluid, which has taken on a strong odor, pours down the cheeks so copiously that it runs into the mouth. The musth bull also dribbles urine almost continuously, turning parts of the penis and sheath green, and scalding the inside of his thighs. The penis is fully extended, swollen, and hangs down to the ground. A musth bull is pungent, and because it warns other males and can attract females, he likes it that way.

  The bull doesn’t just smell different, his looks change, too. He stands tall, holding his head higher, with the forehead thrust forward, and the chin tucked in. Sometimes he presses his tusks into the mud of an embankment and the temporal discharge appears to drain faster and ease the sensation for him. This is full musth, an unmistakable state of mind and body. At this point, the uzis believed that even the nicest bulls were capable of charging and killing anyone in sight. It was as if they had been slipped a powerful, mind-altering drug.

  Depending on the bull’s age and condition, musth can last a few days or a few months. It is taxing to remain in this high-alert, intense state for long. One African bull, in musth for an incredible six months, lost more than a thousand pounds in the process. When musth ends, the bulls are exhausted and often in poor condition. Losing so much fluid comes at a cost. And the high level of testosterone circulating in their systems impairs their immune systems, making them vulnerable to parasites and disease.

  In the teak industry, any time was too much for the biggest, best workers to be out of commission. When the uzis saw, smelled, or sensed the change in their tuskers, they took action. Securing them with strong fetters and tying them up with heavier-gauge forty-foot chains, they treated musth bulls like dangerous convicts.

  Because Williams had not witnessed the phenomenon in full bloom, he could not argue confidently about whether it was the mating imperative he suspected it was. This would be his chance to gain some experience, and the fact that it would be with Bandoola added intrigue.

  Williams and the hunter had been able to follow Bandoola’s trail out of camp, but then it had grown cold. Past a certain point, they could locate no more footprints, not even any droppings. Finally, they saw a few trees badly mangled from the thrusts of sharp tusks. It had to be Bandoola.

  There was no indication of where the elephant had gone from there, but treading quietly in the native rope-soled shoes he had taken to sometimes wearing, Williams instinctively headed toward the dry riverbed. He knew the animals well enough that, particularly if he was familiar with the terrain, he could intuit their movements. “I was sure Bandoola was nearby,” he recalled. “I could feel his presence. I could visualize him standing perfectly still waiting to charge us.”

  Leaving Kya Sine and his rucksack in the shade of a boulder, he traveled alone upstream, like a dog on a scent, galloping forward as though a trail had been left for him.
After an hour of bounding from one river rock to another, he scrambled to the top of a boulder, and there before him stood Bandoola, looking nothing like a murderous monster.

  Still, the scene was curious. Bandoola had planted himself in the shade of a tree, facing a chunk of stone as big as himself. He was swinging his trunk from side to side, a movement which Williams knew the riders called pa-ket-hlwe, or “rocking the cradle.” It was a motion that some believed to be a red flag for bad behavior. The bull also swayed his entire body, putting all his weight on his left legs, then his right, alternating back and forth, in a movement the uzis called “winnowing the rice.” During the entire spectacle, Bandoola maintained an enormous erection—his engorged penis, S-shaped and weighing perhaps sixty pounds, nearly touched the ground.

  Williams crept closer to Bandoola, fascinated. Now he could see the temporal glands clearly. They looked as if they were drying up.

  The tusker’s ears were set back, flat against his head. He appeared to be dreaming with his eyes open.

  Williams wondered if Bandoola imagined the stone he was facing as a receptive female elephant. The man and tusker really did have a lot in common—even sexual frustration. “I was alone. I was young and fit. I was on musth,” he wrote. The sight of Bandoola romancing a rock echoed his own longing writ large.

  He dashed back to Kya Sine and filled him in, imitating Bandoola’s movements. The hunter was relieved. “Hmone aung byee,” he said. “Musth has passed.” Kya Sine would go check on him while Williams rested. In the heavy heat, the young teak man was only too happy to collapse in the shade of the boulder.

  Sometime later, from a deep slumber, Williams became aware of the sound of Kya Sine’s voice: “Mmah!” “Lift it up!” He opened his eyes when he heard a breaking branch. He saw Kya Sine atop Bandoola commanding him to clear debris in front of him. Without a word, Williams shook off his lethargy, gathered his things, and followed behind Bandoola back to camp.

  Po Toke and Williams decided that for the time being, Bandoola would march as a pack elephant back to training camp where, as a safety measure, a small length of the bull’s tusks would be sawed off and blunted. As common and painless a practice as it was, it seemed like a desecration when applied to Bandoola.

  They loaded up and headed out for the march of several days. One night during the journey, Williams got a rare treat: He was able to observe two elephants mating in the forest. It was Bandoola and a recently captured wild female.

  Sometime earlier, the two elephants had advertised their desires to each other through special low-frequency calls: hers saying she was in estrous, his that he was in musth. Then, when no one had seen him, Bandoola had investigated this female’s readiness by smelling her and her urine.

  The two might have gone through a refined courtship. Sometimes elephants about to mate will intertwine their trunks, walk together, or delicately touch and sniff each other. The male might also prod her with his tusks to guide her along to a location of his choosing, often away from other males. But by the time Po Toke had discovered them, they were past polite dating. He brought Williams out to watch. The two elephants mated again and again over the next several nights.

  Williams was enchanted. The intercourse lacked the brutishness that he had witnessed in some other animals. With elephants, he observed, “two animals merely fall in love with each other and days if not weeks of ‘playing with fire’ is engaged in. The male mounting the female with ease and grace, remaining in that position for periods of 3 to 4 minutes. Eventually the marriage is consummated and the act lasts from 5 to 10 minutes,” he wrote.

  Watching Bandoola have sex, Williams thought, “almost with envy,” that the big tusker “had lost his loneliness and found a mate.”

  When they finally reached training camp, Bandoola was in good humor. He placidly allowed the men to clamp chains on his legs and secure them to a massive tamarind tree, with large bushy branches that formed a bright green umbrella of shade. It was time for the tusk trimming. The men made sure the saw would not come close to the nerve ending, which was far back from the few inches to be “tipped.” Rope was tied from one tusk to the other in order to protect the trunk from an accidental cut. A finger dipped in red betel nut marked the incision point, and then Po Toke took up the handsaw. After just a few strokes of the blade Bandoola objected—jerking his massive head hard enough to send Po Toke flying backward. The big male then “let out bellow after bellow of rage.” Williams could feel danger in the air.

  Po Toke shouted for Bandoola to stay still, but the tusker ignored him. The experienced elephant man calmed himself, then returned to speak reassuringly to the animal. Bandoola, Williams said, became “as silent as a coiled spring.” Everyone stood frozen.

  Po Toke picked the saw up from the ground where it had fallen and reached to grab Bandoola’s tusk again. This time, the big male didn’t even wait for the metal to touch ivory. He lunged forward, yanking the heavy chains taut. Po Toke’s commands had no effect. The bull was in a frenzy. Bandoola reached his trunk for one of the chains, grasping it and pulling as hard as he could. When that didn’t give, he threw all of his strength into lunging forward over and over, heaving his bulk against the iron fetters.

  The heavy chains on his forelegs snapped in thunderous claps.

  Men scrambled away, wild-eyed.

  Bandoola now turned to the tree, many times larger than himself, and, placing his tusks high up, began to shove. He would step back for momentum, and then bully his way forward, rolling all his muscle into the effort. With each slam, tamarind fruit, leaves, and branches showered down. Then the impossible happened: The giant tree began to rock back and forth with the elephant. Branches fell with great snaps, whooshes, and thuds; roots beneath the soil broke off in muffled pops. Williams “watched appalled and yet filled with awe.”

  With Bandoola’s next drive came disaster. His back legs were still manacled as the entire tree toppled right onto him. When the noise ceased and the branches settled, Bandoola was nowhere to be seen, buried under the weight and girth of the magnificent tree. As dust still choked the air, Williams feared what everyone else did: Bandoola was dead.

  All ran to him. The great tusker was lying on his side, motionless, under the weight of all the timber. But as they snatched at the debris and reached down to Bandoola, they saw he was alive—his sides heaved with each breath he took. Everyone began to saw and hack at the boughs. They grabbed heavy felling tools in an effort to split the links of the chain securing the bull’s motionless back legs. It took several blows before finally, with a metallic crack, the thick link broke open.

  Bandoola slowly got to his feet. He looked stunned but seemed as gentle as a lamb. Not only alive, he was unharmed. Williams checked every inch of Bandoola’s hide and discovered that except for scratches, the furious bull hadn’t sustained any injuries. The matter of tipping his tusks was never revisited.

  CHAPTER 11

  MASTER CLASS IN TRUST AND COURAGE

  BILLY WILLIAMS WAS CHANGING. THE ELEPHANTS WERE EDUCATING him in matters of character and biology. Within two years of the elephant school’s first sessions, Williams had established an elephant hospital at the same site. It wasn’t a building with wards and surgical suites; merely an area where good stores of medicine could be kept, a place where sick elephants could recuperate in lush, safe surroundings. Only the toughest cases went to the hospital. And without a licensed animal doctor for hundreds of miles, Williams worked on them all. His first four years on the job proved the equivalent of veterinary school. He did what he could: He read, questioned anyone with knowledge, consulted with the uzis, and learned by trial and error.

  He found that working elephants suffered from colic, or went septic from tiger wounds. They fell victim to anthrax, tuberculosis, pox, rabies, and tetanus. There were diseases of the heart, lungs, and blood. They sustained punctures and gashes while hauling teak. They had accidents—falling down slippery slopes, dragged away by raging currents, immobilized by thick m
ud. They dropped weight. They got pregnant. And most of all, they developed “galls,” those pus-filled abscesses just under the skin where their harnesses chafed them.

  As Williams got better at helping elephants, he realized they were doing him a favor also. Through the parade of sore feet, sliced skin, and upset bellies, they were conducting an emotional master class, educating him about love, courage, and trust. He saw that actions meant more to elephants than words, and he supposed it was the same with people, too.

  Trust had to be earned and was granted only to those who could be relied upon. Once he gained their trust, they allowed him to do anything. They actually seemed to grasp that his procedures were “being inflicted for their own good.” In fact, Williams said, “I know, without question, that an elephant can be grateful” for such medical care.

  What made him so sure was a big girl named Ma Chaw, or Miss Smooth (a term for a shapely woman). After a night in the forest, the elephant had dragged herself back to one of the camps in Williams’s territory with long and deep lacerations crisscrossing her back. She had been in a brawl with a tiger. “The most horrible thing an elephant might suffer was a wound from a tiger’s claws,” Williams came to see very quickly. Where the tiger had ripped her skin open, healing would generally be a straightforward process. But the raked patches, where the skin remained intact, were more sinister. When sharp, dirty nails puncture skin, bacteria is injected, which quickly forms life-threatening pockets of infection. Elephants’ skin is so thick that often when there is a gash, only the outside layer will heal, sealing up a foul pouch beneath it. The concealed sore can quickly turn deadly as infection spreads throughout the body, causing organs to shut down in septic shock. Ma Chaw’s wounds were so extensive that Williams had to suspend any touring in order to tend to her every day.