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

  39 The five-hour-long approach Cecilie Leslie, The Golden Stairs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 32.

  40 The wide street FOEB, p. 15.

  41 Colorful buses Ibid.

  42 It was noted FOEB MS, p. 15.

  43 Loneliness may have been Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 241.

  44 The timber even contains Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 23.

  45 As a National Geographic Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 239. Raymond L. Bryant, “Romancing Colonial Forestry: The Discourse of ‘Forestry as Progress’ in British Burma,” The Geographical Journal 162, July 1996, p. 172, mentions the “low incidence of teak” in Burma.

  46 A two-inch ring Burma Pamphlets No. 5: The Forests of Burma (Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1944), p. 48.

  47 died and dried out Bryant, “Romancing Colonial Forestry,” p. 169.

  48 “The rivers of Burma” Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 2.

  49 Because the country E. J. Kahn, Jr., “A Reporter at Large: Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” The New Yorker, November 20, 1948, p. 96.

  50 “their contact with primitive things” Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 246.

  51 five to twenty years Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 52; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 13.

  52 Sitting behind Document S1, p. 2. Differs from published work and amplifies details.

  53 Packed in a teak box Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 239.

  54 Rangoon was full Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 120.

  55 “Just crackers” Document S1, p. 3.

  56 women outnumbering men Pugh, We Danced All Night, p. 3.

  57 Green Imperial pigeons Bertram E. Smythies, The Birds of Burma, rev. ed. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1953), p. 423.

  58 channel buoys Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 240.

  59 seven lighthouses FOEB MS, p. 36. The Williams boys were trusted with firearms, and Jim carried a souvenir from one embedded in his cheek. On a bitterly cold day, when he was sixteen, his hands numb, he had attempted to gently lean his shotgun against a wall. But it slipped and went off, the pellets ricocheting into his face. With all the blood, his brother Tom, terrified, ran into the house, shouting, “Mams, Mams, come quickly, Jimmy is blinded!” A local doctor was summoned and, using the kitchen table as his surgical table, removed most of the pellets. Not one had hit his eye. Even then he was a master of the narrow escape.

  60 “as wild as” FOEB MS, p 369.

  61 “I never looked for” FOEB, p. 370.

  62 His formal education J. H. Williams’s WWI records, National Archives, London; Channon, “Elephant Bill of Burma.”

  63 popular friend Channon, “Elephant Bill of Burma.” J. H. Williams distinguished himself in class, as well as on the cricket pitch, the soccer field, and the debating team.

  64 in 1915 J. H. Williams WWI records, British Library. Ref: 10R/L/MIL/14/67886.

  65 who had died Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 68.

  66 Copious soap Griffith H. Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases (Elibron Classics Series, 2005), pp. 158, 249. First published in Rangoon in 1910.

  67 They usually weighed U Toke Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant (Rangoon: Trade Corporation, 1974), pp. 7–9.

  68 African elephants have tusks Shana Alexander, The Astonishing Elephant (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 42.

  69 shows in their temperaments Conversation with Dr. William Langbauer.

  70 a sense of smell Raman Sukumar, The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 149.

  71 They can cooperate Katy Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 61. Elephants may harbor the capacity for forgiveness, too. One set of female elephants in Africa, sisters, were observed after what must have been a tremendous fight between the two. The broken-off tusk of one was still jammed into the other’s flesh when they were spotted, walking peacefully along side by side. They had made up. And elephants have displayed what certainly looks like altruism—one calf, still nursing, shuttled his younger brother under the mother’s belly so that the littler one could nurse in his place.

  72 as great as five miles Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 21. Thunder, earthquakes, and blue whales produce infrasound, too.

  73 taller than many Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, pp. 7–9.

  74 grow throughout his life Raman Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 77; Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 7. Sukumar says they grow until age thirty; other sources say throughout life.

  75 “an elephant of good quality” Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 3

  76 lavender shade of his skin J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 14.

  77 When asked to choose FOEB, p. 270

  78 rumble at his own joke Document S1, p. 41.

  CHAPTER 3: MEETING THE BOSS—AND THE ELEPHANTS

  1 new khaki shorts Document S1, p. 5.

  2 sitting in the portico Ibid., p. 3.

  3 no one was looking Document M1, p. 9.

  4 Drinking, most forest men found Indranil Banerjie, “Burra Peg: Raj Hangover on Indian Drinking Habits,” The Asian Age, November 23, 2011, http://archive.​asianage.​com/​ideas/​burra-​peg-​raj-​hangover-​indian-​drinking-​habits-​887. Accessed November 20, 2013. “In India, the need to drink was augmented by the intense loneliness of the Europeans, who first came as traders holed up in dreary, isolated posts with little hope of seeing their home country in the near future. The East India Company not just encouraged drinking but also provided prodigious quantities of liquor for its employees stationed in India. This led to much intemperate behaviour.”

  5 brand-new tent Document S1, p. 7.

  6 next to Harding’s EB MS, p. 34.

  7 “how not to receive” J. H. Williams, Scent of Fear (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957), p. 12. Hereinafter cited as SOF.

  8 “as silently as” Rudyard Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” in The Jungle Books, vol. 2 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), p. 161.

  9 aids the circulation Murray E. Fowler and Susan K. Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants (Ames, Iowa: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), pp. 81–82.

  10 “looked as if she” EB MS, p. 4.

  11 Mrs. Fat Bottom Ibid., p. 8.

  12 into a kneeling position G. E. Weissengruber, F. K. Fuss, G. Egger, G. Stanek, K. M. Hittmair, G. Forstenpointner, “The Elephant Knee Joint: Morphological and Biomechanical Considerations,” Journal of Anatomy 208, no. 1 (January 2006): pp. 59–72. http://www.​ncbi.​nlm.​nih.​gov/​pmc/​articles/​PMC2100174. Accessed October 8, 2013.

  13 “regularly examined” Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 16.

  14 more than sixty thousand muscles Eric Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 2002), p. 12.

  15 The farther they were Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 120

  16 It was supposed to be Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 14.

  17 They had them Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 42; Alexander, Astonishing Elephant, p. 41.

  18 “I should only be called” EB MS, p. 4.

  CHAPTER 4: INITIATION RIGHTS

  1 No matter where Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 241; Document S1.

  2 “Yes, I think so” Document S1, p. 8.

  3 As a forest assistant Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 96.

  4 “A knowledge of Burmese” Alan Rabinowitz, Life in the Valley of Death (Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008), p. 40. Even to those who had traveled extensively in Asia, Burmese simply sounded different. It is part of the larger Sino-Tibetan language family, is tonal, and tends to give equal stress to all syllables. The written language, though beautif
ul graphically, can be dizzying to a Westerner—made up of look-alike rounded, circular letters, which are difficult for newcomers to distinguish. The script was developed this way because palm leaves were used for paper, and the gentle curving lines would not tear through the delicate fronds the way straight ones would.

  5 Surrounded by Smythies, Birds of Burma, pp. 370, 376, 382–83. Listen: http://www.​xeno-​canto.​org/​species/​Otus-​lettia.

  6 thickets of pine Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 226.

  7 An old volume Richard Lydekker, The Game Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet (London: Rowland Ward, 1907).

  8 three species of rhino Edwin Harris Colbert, “Notes on the Lesser One-Horned Rhinoceros Rhinoceros sondaicus,” American Museum Novitates, no. 1207 (November 12, 1942): p. 2; White, Burma, p. 91. So healthy was the tiger population that in the few decades before J. H. Williams’s arrival, at least two had been shot right in the urban heart of Rangoon.

  9 It was home John LeRoy Christian, “Burma: Where India and China Meet,” National Geographic, October 1943, p. 502.

  10 Burma was an ethnically diverse Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, pp. 45, 213; Burma Pamphlets No. 9: Burma Facts and Figures (Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1944), p. 3.

  11 “where God lives” “Battle of Asia: Land of Three Rivers,” Time magazine, May 4, 1942.

  12 said a silent prayer Skype conversation with Treve Williams, September 4, 2012. J. H. Williams belonged to the Church of England.

  13 Sunup this time Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 242.

  14 his own four elephants EB MS, p. 4.

  15 Strangers always inspire curiosity Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 14.

  16 targeting the richly Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 138.

  17 In fact, there were Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, “Ritualized Bonding in Male Elephants,” The New York Times, July 21, 2011; Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 48.

  18 “I’d like to start off” EB MS, p. 5.

  19 “That remark” Ibid., p. 19.

  20 It was said of FOEB, p. 82.

  21 “By dawn” EB MS, p. 5. Harding called the jigger a “pau peg.”

  22 “Good Lord!” EB, p. 19.

  23 He conveyed Document S1, p. 10.

  24 botanist Reginald Farrer Jamie James, The Snake Charmer (New York: Hyperion, 2008), p. 118.

  25 Right away Document S1. This version of events, from J. H. Williams’s personal papers, amplifies the story told in “Elephant Bill.”

  26 Often the uzis would It would later be called “allomothering” in science, and “allosuckling” if the friend fed the baby, too. Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 132.

  27 “indeed cruel” EB, p. 67.

  28 Carved from teak Ibid., p. 58; W. W. Smith, “The Elephant Scorns Our Machine Age: He’s Still ‘A-Pilin’ Teak’ with an Intelligence and Power Which Tractors Cannot Supplant,” The New York Times, July 28, 1929.

  29 enough urine to fill a rain barrel Fifty-two gallons. Murray E. Fowler and Susan K. Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants (Ames, Iowa: Blackwell, 2006), p. 389.

  30 Plus, there were Fowler and Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants, p. 72.

  31 communal bunk Susan Williams, Elephant Boy (London: William Kimber, 1963), p. 72.

  32 “a pretty hard life” EB, p. 57.

  33 “My jungle life” EB MS, p. 6.

  34 Most of his FOEB MS, p. 35.

  35 “I have never studied them” Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), p. 370.

  36 Over the years, J. H. Williams, “It Happened to Me: The Elephant Goes to School,” notes for a talk to schoolchildren, p. 1.

  37 Because elephants need Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses, p. 14.

  38 Elephants need a lot of it Elephant digestive efficiency is maybe as low as 22 percent. Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 56; George Schaller, The Last Panda (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 103.

  39 Asian elephants consume Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 56.

  40 While their uzis slept J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960), p. 41.

  41 the forest was so thick Woodthorpe, “Explorations on the Chindwin River, Upper Burma.”

  42 “Many young animals develop” EB MS, p. 51

  43 well-executed bank heist Document S1, p. 13b. The destruction of crops by elephants would be a headache for J. H. Williams, but he would always admire the perpetrators. When shown a mud-stuffed kalouk, Williams thought, what “extraordinarily human animal[s]” they were. This act of anticipation and deceit signaled an intelligence not unlike our own. And when they got caught they seemed both chagrined and gleeful, pleased by their own naughtiness.

  44 two-penny notebook Document S1, p. 21.

  45 Any forester would EB MS, p. 7. “Fortunately they were all friendly and that they could ever be anything else, never entered my head,” J. H. Williams wrote.

  46 “Everything of interest” EB MS, p. 10.

  47 The first cuts released British TV documentary, Inside Nature’s Giants.

  48 There was her heart Alexander, Astonishing Elephant, p. 17. A normal Asian elephant female’s heart would be about fifty-five pounds, but Pin Wa’s was enlarged.

  49 No other mammal breathes Helen Briggs, “Elephant ‘Had Aquatic Ancestor,’ ” BBC News, April 15, 2008, http://​news.​bbc.​co.​uk/​2/​hi/​science/​nature/​7347284.​stm, accessed October 9, 2013. J. H. Williams didn’t know why then, and even many decades later it would remain an evolutionary mystery. Perhaps elephant ancestors were marine animals who needed strong muscles around the lungs to fight underwater pressure as they breathed through their trunks. That might also help explain why modern elephants are so at home in the water. Science would, in fact, come to hypothesize that elephants have aquatic ancestors.

  50 A meticulous man Conversation with Treve Williams, Long Island, New York, June 10, 2011.

  51 Everyone was so EB, p. 144.

  52 tin tub SOF, p. 35.

  53 patterns of tusk sets Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 15.

  54 Tusk girth Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 120.

  55 But he deduced EB MS, p. 11.

  56 until Bandoola’s forties Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 76.

  57 in charge of about three hundred Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 244.

  58 the families of the riders EB, p. 115. For instance, the camp of U Po See, a camp leader Williams respected, did not allow families, only his own.

  59 More than once All this village description is from FOEB, pp. 133–37.

  60 The monks Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 34; FOEB, p. 136.

  CHAPTER 5: HOW TO READ AN ELEPHANT

  1 When the group reached their first camp EB MS, p. 11.

  2 During the monsoon Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 4.

  3 Plaited together Document S1, p. 13.

  4 “To hunt is to learn” EB, p. 42. As a popular ditty of the time went: “What is hit is history / And what is missed is mystery.” And Stanford, Far Ridges.

  5 Forest assistants might Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 96.

  6 Tigers were plentiful Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 5. He would agree with the rational assessment of an authority on Burma at the time who wrote that the forests were home to “big, and so called dangerous, game, and poisonous snakes. The natural instinct of all wildlife, however, is to leave man well alone unless wounded or taken by surprise.”

  7 Williams would fill out paperwork Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 243.

  8 In the name of progress Bryant, “Romancing Colonial Forestry,” p. 171.

  9 The industry may have Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, pp. 8, 18–19.

  10 The men, using only axes Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 50; Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 243; Goodall, Exodus Burma. “With such ‘unpromisin
g’ tools,” an astonished colleague of J. H. Williams’s wrote, “the largest trees are felled with speed and accuracy.” Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 243.

  11 Logs twenty to thirty feet Document fragment 21, “Thoughts on Elephants,” p. 4. Fourteen-page typewritten paper from the archives of Treve Williams.

  12 They showed Williams how EB MS, p. 131.

  13 The fourteen-year-old, SOF, p. 153.

  14 a spaniel had J. H. Williams did not have a dog yet; this one was borrowed for the hunt. Conversation with Treve Williams, June 10, 2011.

  15 “humor and kindliness” FOEB MS, p. 40.

  16 how Williams liked his tea Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, February 25, 2013.

  17 he was exceedingly capable SOF, p. 153; J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 187. “Aung Net was someone to be thankful for,” Williams wrote, “a simple, loyal soul.”

  18 it was always Aung FOEB, p. 276.

  19 astonishing delicacies Angela Levin, “Fortnum and Mason: One’s Grocers as Old as Great Britain,” Daily Mail, November 3, 2007, http://www.​dailymail.​co.​uk/​news/​article-​491568/​Fortnum-​Mason-​Ones-​grocers-​old-​Great-​Britain.​html, accessed October 25, 2013; Jonathan Glancey, “A Facial at Fortnums? Never!” The Guardian (London), November 4, 2007, http://www.​guardian.​co.​uk/​lifeandstyle/​2007/​nov/​05/​foodanddrink.​shopping, accessed October 25, 2013.

  20 The intricate patterns Shway Yoe [Sir James George Scott], The Burman: His Life and Notions (London: MacMillan, 1896), pp. 39–41. The dense art covered so much tender skin that boys were generally administered opium to dull the pain during the tattooing. Few could bear having more than a few figures inked in at a time.

  21 special tree bark Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 4.

  22 Out of the pool Email with Jenny Blackburn Theuman, elephant keeper, February 22, 2012.

  23 served as a barrier Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 48.

  24 They also might grab J. H. Williams, “The Gentle Giants,” Leader Magazine, May 13, 1950, p. 18.