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

  All the things Williams had become acclimated to—the heat, the threat of disease, the terrain—were daunting and deadly to the new soldiers. They might hike across hot dry plains one day and then be mired in mud with fifteen inches of rain falling the next. Roads turned into rivers. Tracks became quagmires. After the rains came smothering heat and humidity that made their skin bloom with fungus and rot, and caused corpses to bloat and blacken.

  The men were tormented by blackflies, mosquitoes, ticks, and leeches. They suffered from dysentery, cholera, dengue fever, scabies, trench foot, and the infection of skin, bones, and joints called “yaws.” And most of all malaria.

  During a particularly bad spell, while 10 soldiers a day were evacuated because of wounds, 120 were left suffering from malaria. Eighty percent of American forces contracted dysentery in another siege, but they kept fighting. Some had to go into combat with the backsides of their pants cut away.

  There was also the simple, hard-to-describe strain of jungle life—pitch-black nights, vegetation so dense that it made them claustrophobic, no water at all, or water rendered bitter with purifying tablets, encounters with deadly snakes. The stress of battle could drive soldiers to nervous breakdown, or what they called going “jungle happy.” And their plight would be a protracted ordeal—the fighting in Burma would be the longest campaign of World War II. As one military man said, “No other army fought for so long. No other army met such a ferocious enemy. No other army had to cope with such atrocious conditions.”

  As bad as it was, eventually the tide began shifting, and the British finally held the advantage. A number of factors were involved.

  After some questionable leadership at the beginning of the engagement, the troops now had a savior in Bill Slim—the most capable commander imaginable. The number of Allied soldiers at last was superior. The supplies were better. They had bigger, finer tanks. And, crucially, with the addition of American airpower, they owned the skies, which meant soldiers on the ground could dig in and claim turf knowing that they would be continually resupplied.

  Something else changed, too. The Japanese began to struggle. They had overstretched themselves, fighting too many enemies on too many fronts. The soldiers in Burma were not supported. And they hated the land, calling Burma jigoku, or “hell.” The packaging of their food supplies rusted, and the contents rotted, while the American K ration stood up to tropical humidity. Among the Japanese generals, there was a saying: “I’ve upset Tojo. I’ll probably end up in Burma.”

  Slim’s Fourteenth Army, better trained and better equipped, eighty thousand to one hundred thousand strong, was geared to retake Southeast Asia. With the end of the monsoons, troops stormed back into Burma.

  There was a new burst of activity in and around Williams’s camp, and the work of the elephants increased. The engineers had gone from skeptical to astonished by the elephants’ finesse. In fact, Williams wrote, “The demands for the elephants here, there and everywhere were more than I could cope with.” The animals had become so sought-after Williams had to tackle a couple of issues.

  One was an ongoing argument about which branch they belonged to: the Royal Indian Army Service Corps or the Royal Engineers? Williams always considered the elephants bridge builders and not pack animals. This point was obvious, he said, but still “the problem was far too difficult for General Headquarters to decide.” All in all, he found it reprehensible that this kind of paperwork and red tape sometimes got in the way of their mission. He was a victim of it personally, too. His rate of pay was up for debate for a year among the army clerks who couldn’t calculate an elephant adviser’s precise grade. (He was furious once when he learned that little Diana, Treve, and Michael had begged for money from soldiers in Shillong after hearing him talk about his financial woes.) The pay scale war went on until Slim himself intervened on Williams’s behalf.

  The other issue was the elephants’ proper care. Elephant Company was dispersed among many different troops. The animals, in various-sized groupings, were sent off with their uzis to help where they were needed. Williams couldn’t be with all the elephants all the time, so they were left in the hands of soldiers who didn’t understand the sensitive creatures at all, and didn’t listen to the uzis. The Gurkhas would all pile onto the elephants’ backs and use their ears to sling their rifles on. British troopers would order the uzis to tie the elephants up at night when the animals needed to go find fodder. When they did follow the basics of elephant care—freeing the animals after a day’s work, for example—disaster sometimes struck. One Gurkha sentry covering the late shift saw a loose elephant nearby. Either unnerved by the approach or lusting for ivory, he shot at the elephant’s head. Williams raced to the scene and happily found that the tusker survived. The bullet had entered just under the eye, traveled down through the cheek, and then ricocheted into the chest. The cheek wound was the size of a “five-shilling piece.” That was easy enough to treat, but the bullet itself, which had lodged in the chest, had to be removed surgically. Still, the tough bull recovered enough to be back on the job in three weeks.

  Throughout the war, Williams would treat elephants who had sustained gaping wounds in bombing raids. Others recaptured from the Japanese had blistered, weeping burns where acid from the batteries they had carried had leaked onto their backs. These were “some of the most appalling wounds” he saw on the conscripted elephants. It was not unusual in these cases to encounter wells in their flesh half an inch deep. If the animals were lucky enough to reach Williams, the first thing he did was relieve them of any pack duty. Then he treated them with a dusting of M&B powder, or M&B 693, a fairly new sulfonamide antibacterial, which, in fact, was trusted enough to have been used to cure Winston Churchill’s pneumonia in 1942.

  One of the best elephants in Williams’s care—Okethapyah, or Pagoda Stone—was killed by a land mine. The officer in charge was so distraught by his death that he drove twenty miles over a rough, dangerous track to tell Williams.

  Occasionally, Elephant Bill would get calls in the middle of the night on the field phone about tuskers nosing around camp seeking salt bags or other rations. If the camp was close enough, he would drive over to shoo the animals away.

  Williams issued notes on elephant management, but still there were problems. Finally he refused to supply his animals to any troops who consistently treated them improperly.

  All of the injuries and illnesses prompted Williams to create a sick camp, or elephant hospital, on the bank of the river Uyu, a tributary to the Chindwin. It grieved him to see his animals suffering. His career had been spent trying to make the lives of working elephants better. Now he saw creatures who had no understanding of war being sacrificed to it. “To inspect the wounded and sick elephant casualties in that sick elephant Camp, pained me as much as a first field dressing station filled with the wounded men,” he wrote.

  The area in and around elephant camp was still chaotic. The war was intensifying, and there were enough elephants to form a few brigades. While some of them were kept in smaller bands, Bandoola was part of an elite group of forty-six elephants working eight miles north of Tamu. Williams placed him there not only because he deserved to be among elephants of highest rank, but also in order for the tusker to stay close to headquarters in Moreh. Bandoola’s group did the most complicated and toughest road and bridge building. They were the ones shown off to reporters, which meant that just as Williams gained fame, so did Bandoola.

  Time magazine wrote, “The most famous elephant assisting the Indian Army is Bandula, named after a famous Burmese general.” The story promoted an exaggerated legend about him: “Bandula’s mahout receives ‘danger pay,’ ” the magazine said, “because the elephant has already killed two keepers.” An Australian newspaper claimed the count was up to five.

  Life magazine’s reporter described the actual work of bridge building in detail. He watched as an elephant placed a log next to several others. “The elephant kneels down and nudges the log gently with his head, then sta
nds back and has a look at his work. If it isn’t right yet, more shouts and kicks come from the uzi. The elephant kneels down once again and gives another nudge, headwise. The job is right this time so the uzi and the elephant go to get another log.”

  That was the basic work of the elephants, and it went on, almost always with the sound of gunfire in the background. Bandoola remained fit and healthy, yet the war affected the animals. With their freedom so often curtailed, they became restless and agitated. As a result, during this time, Bandoola challenged and killed two other tuskers, who had to be replaced from other groups. In a logging camp, Williams would have separated such big, cocky tuskers.

  It was a terrible loss in every way, but, Williams wrote, “One forgave Bandoola anything.” Despite some deaths and the occasional lost animal, Elephant Bill was building up his herd. Throughout the war, it would be a numbers game—gaining 3 elephants here, 50 there, until at one point he had accumulated 1,652.

  ELEPHANT COMPANY WAS HITTING its stride. And, as usual, the animals were showing Williams how smart they were. For one thing, they became accustomed to the roar of engines far faster than he had predicted. And, for another, they figured out how to get what they needed. They weren’t receiving their peacetime rations of fifteen pounds of salt a month, but they discovered where they could find the mineral themselves. They kept track of drop zones, and at night snuck over looking for bags of salt that had broken open on impact or that lay nearby undetected.

  Even during the war, time with the family in Shillong meant children, dogs, and mischief.

  Williams was completely immersed in his world of elephants, but two days before Christmas 1943 there was a miracle: He was given seven days’ leave to visit his family in Shillong. Treve had just turned six, and Lamorna, whom Williams hardly even knew, was a little over a year. Williams drove four hundred rough miles west in his Jeep, which now sported a red elephant insignia on the side, arriving on the family’s doorstep on Christmas Eve. Despite the gut pain continuing to plague him, Jim reveled in the happy, if short, reunion. He taught the children how to climb trees—hoisting himself up to demonstrate—and warned them to always keep “three bits” of themselves attached while moving only one limb at a time. He made “telephones” for them out of matchboxes and string. And he nursed an injured carrier pigeon he had found, convinced it was vital to the war effort. Treve was especially proud to show the neighborhood children his father’s Jeep.

  During leave, Williams could drive his Jeep to Shillong to be with his family. Here, he is shown with Susan, Treve, and niece Diana.

  Susan and the cook prepared the best meals they could from their stocks. Jim’s favorite was kidney pie and mashed potatoes. They had evening cocktails again like in the old days. He slept soundly. And he could open presents with all the children laughing and playing around him.

  At four o’clock on the chilly dark morning of January 1, 1944, Jim was back behind the wheel, heading east with an Indian assistant. The headlights illuminated the dark tunnel of the roadway—walled in on both sides by thick jungle. He was lost in thought as he swung around a corner and his headlights flashed on what at first glance looked to him like a calf. As he came to a stop, he realized that there “in the middle of the tarred macadam road,” was a lordly male Bengal tiger in his “finest full winter striped coat.” The five-hundred-pound cat sat up and blinked into the headlights, his warm breath forming small cloudbursts in the cold air. Startled perhaps, yet lazily confident. His size was astonishing, and as he slowly unfolded himself to stand up, his great head came level with the windshield. With every inch he gained as he stood up, the Jeep seemed to lose an equal amount, shrinking to the size of a toy. And Williams said, “I felt myself shrinking into a toy driver.” Reflexively, he honked the horn.

  The tiger turned his back to saunter down the road. Williams noted his furry testicles swaying as he disappeared around the bend. Behind the wheel, Williams lit a cigarette and gave the animal time to clear the road.

  As he sat there, he considered what had happened. He could have taken the opportunity to bag a trophy. But he found himself identifying with the cat, who was as reluctant to leave the warmth of the road as he himself had been to leave his family. And, besides, Williams had gotten over the urge to kill wild things long ago. As it would turn out, he would have to confront the animal twice more that early morning. Each time, the tiger refused to enter the forest, only running to beat the Jeep to the next bend. Ultimately, when the cat did vanish for good, Williams popped the vehicle into high gear, with “mixed memories of Christmas-trees and tigers” floating in a reverie.

  On his return to Moreh, there was finally news he had hoped for. The army was getting serious about returning in force. All elephants were called upon to work on improving the main road from Tamu eighty miles south to Kalemyo. Rumors were swirling that the Japanese planned to march right up the Kabaw Valley, exactly where the road building was going on. He saw more men and more activity. With the movement of British forces and equipment into the area, and Allied planes streaking overhead, Williams was certain they planned to take a stand.

  Imphal, not actually even in Burma, would be the center of the action—the place both sides had fixed as a turning point in their campaigns.

  The Japanese were plotting a massive assault on this important Allied military complex (as well as Kohima, a supply pipeline city to the north). Its strategic location and rich stockpile dumps would enhance their control of Burma and enable them to stage their next move—an invasion into the heart of India. General Mutaguchi Renya ordered only light supplies for his troops, believing that victory would be swift and that his men could live off the land in the meantime.

  The Allies, on the other hand, were certain that the Japanese had overestimated their hand. Slim had accomplished the seemingly impossible—he had moved tanks into the jungle-clad terrain. He also possessed better airpower for fighting and resupply. The Allied strategists planned to dig in, luring the enemy so far west they would overextend themselves. While the stocks of the British soldiers would be replenished by plane, their adversaries would starve. All of this planning was top secret; Williams knew nothing for certain of the long-range view, but his deduction was right.

  A preview of what was about to happen in the fight for Burma played out on a smaller scale in February 1944 in the south, in the area known as the Arakan. The Japanese still had the advantage of speed and surprise, but they were beaten because they were outnumbered and, crucially, the British now had planes on their side.

  The Arakan brought the first solid victory in Burma. But emblematic of all the fighting in the country, the victory was bloody and savage, and had come with an enormous toll. There were horrors large-scale and small. During the clash, the Japanese captured and murdered thirty-five patients and medical staff at a field hospital. In fact, the winning Allies lost more men than the retreating Japanese: eight thousand casualties for British and Indian forces; five thousand for the Japanese.

  In early March, Williams received a call on the field phone from the divisional commander that seemed to contradict his theory about a British resurgence. The officer sounded dour and invited Williams to lunch with General Geoffrey Scoones and Major General Douglas Gracey at Imphal the next day. It was unsettling.

  Williams immediately walked over to Browne’s hut to tell him. Browne, seated at his table, folded up the crossword puzzle he was working on, and brought out the rum. They tried to hash out what might be in store. It was no good. They were mystified, and no amount of intelligent guessing would get them anywhere. They were in such a funk that they couldn’t even muster their usual cocktail-hour banter. They ate an early supper and retired.

  At headquarters the next day, Williams was led into a tent that served as the divisional commander’s office. The information he was about to receive was considered confidential. He was asked how long it would take him to march all of Elephant Company out of Burma. It sounded to Williams an awful lot like another
retreat.

  “My heart missed a couple of beats, in bitter disappointment,” Williams wrote. Still, he walked over to a large map on the desk. “Knowing the exact position of every elephant in the Valley,” he said, “I estimated it would take five days to assemble all animals.” He said there would have to be two rendezvous sites: one at Kanchaung, eight miles north of Tamu, and one at Mintha, another twelve miles north of that.

  He was told to keep all information under wraps, but received permission to divulge the details to Browne. A secret code for the last-minute exodus was established, one that Williams would receive on the military phone at elephant camp.

  Williams drove off in his Jeep. He stopped at the satellite elephant camp near Mintha to tell them, as cheerfully as he could feign, to pack up. Then in the blackness of the jungle night, he drove back down to elephant camp. It was a morose nightcap with Browne as he laid out the situation. The two men went off to their bunks, trying to sleep for a few hours despite the sound of heavy gunfire in the jungle.

  What Williams could not know was that the elephants were being evacuated to keep them safe during the hell that was about to erupt. The orders from HQ heralded the largest offensive against the Japanese to date in the effort to reclaim Burma. This would be the decisive campaign, the turning point in what until then had been a demoralizing arena for the Allied forces. Now there was air superiority, organizational streamlining, and better training and morale. In addition, the British had managed to transport tanks to Imphal, something the Japanese thought impossible considering the jungle-covered mountains that enclosed the plain. If everything went according to plan, Elephant Company would return to bridge building in a matter of months.

  CHAPTER 25

  A CRAZY IDEA

  FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS, WILLIAMS AND BROWNE SET ABOUT ORGANIZING the elephants. Reserve rations were dumped at the rendezvous sites, and the uzis’ wives and children were transported by truck to safety. C. W. Hann, who had temporarily replaced Stanley “Chindwin” White, would be in charge of Bandoola’s elite group of forty-six elephants in Kanchaung, eight miles away. Browne would go up to Mintha to lead the ragtag group of thirty-three there to Imphal. The ethnic Karen uzis, who had lost their elephants during the ambush at the Chindwin, gathered at the elephant camp compound with Williams. They would be divided into two groups to assist the elephant teams.