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

  Susan was shocked by how stung she felt. Why should she care so much about this newcomer’s plans to leave? Especially when there were so many attentive men in her life. Aside from forest tours, she had spent the past year in a stately residence with Uncle Pop in Rangoon. The social whirl began every day before breakfast, when she rode a handsome English hunter named Perfection along the city’s riding paths. Every week, practically every day, there was swimming, dancing, and tennis. Horse races were attended on Saturday afternoons, in “ankle-length frocks and picture hats.” She had membership in all the top colonial clubs: Gymkhana, Pegu, Sailing, and Country Club. Weekdays, while Uncle Pop was in his office at the secretariat, she bought groceries, picked out new things from grand department stores such as Rowe & Co., or had clothing and shoes made to order from little boutiques, all on limitless credit. Everywhere there were young Englishmen interested in her.

  Yet something was missing. It was true that unmarried girls from home were in the minority in Burma, and she had had her pick of Rangoon’s expat bachelors. But no one had intrigued her as Williams had.

  When they said good night, she went off to her tent distressed at the thought of his imminent departure. “I was surprised, almost angry with myself,” she wrote, “to find how miserable I felt at the thought that this young man, whom after all I had only known for one day, was going away and that I should probably never see him again.”

  In the morning, Susan uncharacteristically insisted on joining the men for their day’s work assessing the trees in the area. As they hiked, she was pleased that “Molly, was very much on my side; she made a tremendous fuss of me the whole day, and even came and lay across my feet when we stopped for a rest.”

  Whatever thoughts Billy Williams had had about a quick departure were now erased. That night, following colonial jungle etiquette, Williams reciprocated the dinner invitation.

  Freshly bathed and in her best travel clothes, Susan walked the few feet to Williams’s camp. When they all sat down in canvas chairs at the collapsible table, she was astonished. Joseph the cook, wearing a black fez atop his gray hair, had outdone himself. “We had a meal which I found it almost impossible to believe could have been produced in the jungle,” Susan wrote. They started with chicken soup, then moved on to a roast duck served with green peas and fancy duchess potatoes—potatoes mashed with eggs and cream, shaped into rosettes and baked till crisp on the outside, all followed by fresh mushrooms on toast.

  This time, Hopwood understood he was a third wheel and took himself off to bed especially early, nine thirty, leaving Williams and Susan alone with the bulk of the night still ahead. By now, they felt more comfortable with each other. The Burmese jungle was a backdrop as romantic as any, with the exotic, insistent calls of nocturnal birds, and in the clearing, out from under the jungle canopy, the stars were nearly blinding against the dark sky.

  Williams’s familiar black label whiskey helped put them both at ease. Susan loved Billy’s stories, and she was touched that he was so curious about hers, listening attentively to what she called her “outpourings.”

  She and her five siblings had lost their mother in the 1918 influenza pandemic, and were raised by their paternal grandmother. Susan had been trained as a children’s nurse, or nanny, because her father dismissed her real desire to go to gardening college as “too hard work for a girl.” She wanted something different for herself, though she wasn’t sure what, and the offer from Uncle Pop had been a thunderbolt. He was a stranger to her and Burma a mystery, but she leaped at the chance. “I was like a newly-hatched butterfly, whose wings were still a little damp and crumpled, but nevertheless wings.”

  Hopwood, “Uncle Pop,” was her father’s first cousin. He had sequentially brought a number of nieces over to Burma to run his household, calling each in her turn “Miss Poppy” so he would not have to learn their names.

  It was just the sort of thing she and Williams laughed over this night. As Williams amused her with his own self-deprecating stories, Susan felt an attachment growing between them. And she began to think of him as “Jim,” as his family called him, rather than “Billy,” the name used by his peers.

  “The more Jim talked the more his tremendous zest for life came over to me,” she recalled. This man had a rare personality—he was warm and laughed easily, but he also “gave a sense of solidarity and strength, and inspired a deep trust.” He believed in an inherent goodness in people and exuded that quality in himself. It came off as confidence without any conceit—a trust that he could handle anything and it would be all right.

  Susan asked what would happen to Molly while he was away on his expedition. Williams told her this was his biggest worry. His nomadic life in the forest made him feel especially close to his loyal companion. She was without question the most intelligent dog he had ever had. He had always had small cots, raised up off the floor, for all his dogs to sleep in, but Molly was the only one who knew how to adjust her own mosquito net, tucking herself in at night. He could send her ten miles back to camp to retrieve an item and count on her to do it. He was certain that he didn’t even need to speak to her, or be near her, to communicate with her. He would think of a command, such as “sit,” and even without hearing it, Molly would obey. That inspired him to experiment with their ESP from longer and longer distances. On the occasions when he left her behind in camp, he felt he could continue to see her in his mind—not a memory, but a real picture of her in that moment. He was certain he could silently “call” to her from miles away, and she would find him. He even coordinated a test. He commanded Molly to stay in camp, and then asked Aung Net to note the exact time if, in fact, she left her post. From four miles away at precisely noon, he silently beckoned Molly. Aung Net told him later that at that exact moment, Molly Mia, suddenly alert, dashed off into the forest, running directly for Williams, whose location she could not have known in advance.

  Molly Mia, left, was the smartest dog Williams ever had. He felt certain she could read his mind, and she did things, such as tucking in her own mosquito net at night, that none of his other dogs ever did.

  “We have got so attached and dependent on each other’s company,” Jim told Susan, “that I don’t want to be parted from her.” In addition, he couldn’t imagine her being able to adjust to a temporary owner.

  Susan pointed out that the dog didn’t seem to “dislike me too much.” And then she said, “Oh, do let me look after her for you, I have wanted a dog so much and I am sure Uncle Pop won’t mind especially as she is such a lovely dog.” Molly, who must have picked up on Susan’s excited focus on her, wagged her tail.

  In the flickering light Jim looked across at the beautiful woman and made an extraordinary offer: “If you’d like her, Susan, I’ll give you Molly Mia.” He was thinking of the dog’s feelings, figuring that if Molly became attached to Susan it wouldn’t be fair to yank her away again when he returned. He told Susan that her care of Molly “would solve everything.”

  It would solve a few things for me, too, Susan thought. By sharing Molly, she would gain a solid connection to Jim. They demurely said good night. To Williams’s astonishment, Molly Mia trotted right behind Susan to her tent.

  In the morning, after tea and breakfast and packing, Williams prompted Susan to leash Molly in preparation for his departure. “I said good-bye to the dog, rather furtively hoping that there might be a bit of a scene,” he admitted, “but Molly merely wagged her tail. When I had gone about half a mile from the camp, I waited, listening for the sound of the Alsatian crashing after me.” It became clear there was no such desperate escape, and Williams laughed to himself, thinking: “If she’s got Molly Mia when I get back, the only way I’ll get her back is to marry the girl.” Still in camp, Susan had similar thoughts. Even though their time together had been short, “some sort of unbreakable link had grown between us.” And she had, in Molly Mia, a “hostage.”

  BACK IN RANGOON THE next week, the courtship resumed, with a few complications. When Williams
phoned the house looking to take Susan out to dinner, Uncle Pop answered. The old man completely mangled the message, reporting to Susan that “that chap Williams” was looking to visit to talk about deep-sea fishing with him. He didn’t think it was a good idea as it would only upset the dog, but he had agreed to close Molly off in a separate room if Williams came for dinner. It wasn’t what Williams had said at all.

  The next night, Jim pulled up to the fancy house at 25 Windermere Park, in Rangoon’s most fashionable suburb, intending not to dine with Uncle Pop, but to have a date with Susan. When Hopwood trundled off to his own meal at home, Susan realized that her uncle had planned this surprise all along. Before she left for the evening, she went into the dining room. “My heart went out to poor old Uncle Pop as he sat there, straight as a ramrod, alone at the dinner table,” she wrote. “In the elation of the moment, I decided to give him a kiss. He looked puzzled and rather horrified—I never attempted it again.”

  Jim and Susan spent every moment together that week, sightseeing, dancing, and socializing, often with Molly by their side. Susan discovered what all of Jim’s colleagues already knew about him: His stamina was boundless. He “never seemed to tire,” she said. And she was charmed by Williams’s popularity. “The more I went about with him, the more I was drawn to his magnetic personality and tremendous sense of fun,” she said. “We danced and laughed and talked about everything under the sun, and by the end of the week I knew I was in love with him and, what was more important, I felt that he loved me.”

  She was right, but Williams had a lot going on, notably a complicated expedition. When he wasn’t courting Susan, he was negotiating the politics of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation and making preparations. An employee he had regular contact with was an assistant to one of the executives. The man was a playboy, who, Williams wrote, had been nicknamed “He Man” by the others at the firm.

  He Man offered to take care of Molly Mia, but Williams told him that job had gone to Susan. “In that case,” He Man replied, “I suppose I shall have to look after Susan.”

  A FEW DAYS BEFORE his departure, Williams threw a formal dinner party for twelve, with linens, china, and printed menus. Joseph was the chef. As Williams was frantically packing and making lists, it was only natural that the theme was “What have you forgotten?”

  When Susan arrived, all dressed up and walking Molly Mia beside her, Jim thought she looked like Diana the Huntress. Unfortunately, He Man appeared, too, and while Williams grabbed the spot to Susan’s left, He Man claimed the right, swiftly taking center stage. He “impressed the girls by biting the side out of his champagne glass and chewing it like a wafer biscuit.” Though the women were astonished, Williams was appalled. Flirting with Susan, He Man then grabbed her glass next and bit down. To Williams’s glee, blood poured from his mouth. One guest warned, “Look out, He Man, or Molly Mia will start chewing you.”

  Sophisticated and attractive, Susan Rowland (right;) drew attention in Rangoon.

  Throughout the evening, the guests teased Williams, taking bets on how he would meet his demise: whether he would starve to death or be fattened by cannibals and cooked in a pot. Soon, jokes about which body parts would be the most edible turned bawdy.

  Williams came up with a useful game: Everyone would turn over their homemade menus in order to jot down important items he might have failed to pack for the trip. As the others set about scribbling suggestions, Susan quietly placed a note into his hand. She had written one word: Susan.

  Williams looked into her eyes, smiling. “No, I haven’t,” he said to her, “and shan’t.” He tucked the paper into his pocket.

  On Williams’s last night in Rangoon, Hopwood invited him for dinner. The old man gave him a box full of very good, but very tangled, fishing equipment, including shark hooks and a harpoon gun. Uncle Pop, who liked to appear unaware of the courtship, suggested that Susan help him straighten out the gear, and then he went off alone to smoke a cigar. The couple slipped out of the house.

  Brimming with ardor, Williams took her to the most sacred place in Burma. In the warm tropical night, they walked around the massive gold-domed Shwe Dagon Pagoda and its complex of pavilions, temples, and religious relics. The thousand-year-old Buddhist shrine has a bell-shaped stupa that had been replated in gold by the faithful over such a long time that the best guess was that it now weighed one hundred thousand pounds.

  So commanding by day, it was “luminous with floodlights by night,” in the words of W. Somerset Maugham, “a sudden hope in the dark night of the soul.” The pagoda was alive with people, the flickering glow of many lamps, the song of the cicadas, and, most of all, the tinkling of thousands of gold and silver bells. Susan breathed in the sweet air—filled with the perfume of heaps of flowers that had been left behind by daytime worshippers—lotus, jasmine, and marigold.

  The mysticism of the Buddhist faith resonated with Jim because, he said, he came from a corner of Cornwall where it was believed that “Ghoulies and Pixies still exist.” He was attracted to the unknown in spirituality and also the generosity, the gentleness, and serenity it seemed to bestow among its followers. He believed that it was the Buddhist “belief in the community of all living creatures” that had fostered the loving relationship between humans and elephants in Burma.

  Alone together on the eve of his departure, the couple conveyed their deep feelings for each other, with talk of marriage. But Jim and Susan would each recall how that transpired quite differently. Jim noted that their communication was wordless—that they had an unspoken understanding. He wrote, “We neither of us declared our feelings outright. It was not necessary.” He mentioned to Susan that after the Andamans he’d be off to England. The implication being that they would marry there. He merely kissed Susan on the forehead to say good-bye, reserving his exuberant emotion for his farewell to Molly Mia.

  Susan would always remember a heart-to-heart talk in the dreamlike light of the pagoda. “On that last evening together,” she said, “when the thought of parting seemed unbearable, we agreed that if we both felt the same way when he returned in three months’ time, we would get engaged.”

  CHAPTER 18

  THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

  THE MISSION TO THE ANDAMANS WAS AN ADVENTURE BILLY WILLIAMS had been spoiling for. And yet he couldn’t focus entirely on it, because he was leaving behind those dearest to him: his elephants, his Alsatian dog Molly Mia, and Susan Margaret Rowland.

  He had reason to worry on all counts. The elephants, whom he had doted on for ten years, were in the hands of a new recruit, capable but untested. Molly, the jungle-trained dog who had never been apart from him, would now be staying with someone she hardly knew, and in the crowded city no less. And Susan. He knew by now that she was the love of his life, but he had to trust she felt the same way. He had seen far-flung tuskers converge on a tiny patch of jungle, drawn by a receptive female, and the human equivalent was happening in Rangoon in his absence. Susan had been the target of attention from other Bombine men, and, most unsettlingly, from He Man, who had promised to look after her. That thought, more than the heaving ocean, had the power to sicken him.

  Would he have a soul mate, a dog, or even his platoon of elephants in four months? With all of those unknowns, he wasn’t sure what he would be returning to. And that was assuming he would return, which not everyone at the time would have bet on.

  The Andamans, consisting of 550 islands, had for centuries unnerved outsiders. It was a mysterious archipelago surrounded by shark-infested waters. Harboring hostile natives, terrible disease, huge monitor lizards, and mangrove swamps, this was a corner of the world in which explorers could vanish without a trace. Some of the islands were no more than rocks jutting up from the water. Very few were inhabited; fewer still had ever been seen by Westerners, but all were feared. Ptolemy called them the “Cannibal Isles.” Williams’s Burmese friends referred to the place as “Kalah Kyan”—the Black Islands, the Islands of No Return, or the Disease Islands.

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p; He would have three young assistants for the work: Geoffrey W. Houlding, of Bombine’s Rangoon mills, Max Christian Carl Bonington, and a young man named Bruno. “I had no briefing for the adventure,” Williams wrote. “I was merely told that since the competition of Pacific hardwood timbers was so affecting the prices of teak markets of Burma the company which employed me were considering entering the field. It was believed that the forests of the North Andaman Islands might offer supplies. My work was to explore them, cruise them, enumerate sufficient trees and sample areas of what I found and report.”

  The only timberwork that had been done there previously was on narrow coastal plots, so the quality and quantity of wood in the interior were unknown.

  Most of all, Williams’s personal contribution would be assessing whether elephants, so necessary to hauling logs in the jungle, could survive on the available vegetation. In preparation, he had followed one of his female elephants for three days and nights, getting little sleep himself, in order to identify what and how much she ate. If he was going to look for adequate elephant forage he wanted to know it when he saw it. Geoff, “a Forest engineer with expert knowledge of timber milling,” would determine if the forests contained timber worth harvesting.

  The most remarkable part of the trip—the fact that his colleagues found repugnant—was that Williams would be employing a crew of forty-eight hardened criminals. He had always viewed Burmese prisoners in the mold of Robin Hood, not Western thugs, and had no qualms. The convicts would be given the utmost courtesy. He believed now, years after the stabbing incident with Aung Kyaw, that treating others with the respect he gave his elephants could, often enough, work miracles.