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

  21 refined courtship Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 41.

  22 The intercourse lacked Document 1a, p. 55.

  CHAPTER 11: MASTER CLASS IN TRUST AND COURAGE

  1 Within two years Conversation with Treve Williams, June 13, 2012.

  2 at the same site J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 100.

  3 They got pregnant “The Picture Post,” May 1950. Article fragment from the archives of Treve Williams. “When a mating or suspected mating is observed,” Williams said, “a note is entered in the inspection-book, and on the twenty-first month following that entry the expectant mother is invariably rested. After the birth of the calf she is usually in harness again within two months.”

  4 As Williams got better J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 106. A local physician, “Doc Picary,” taught him some basics, such as how to sew up a wound. For this, Williams scrubbed in on a leg amputation. Though the sight of the severed foot in a waste bin under the operating table nauseated him, he collected himself, taking the doctor at his word that suturing flesh was “a lot easier than darning socks.”

  5 Because purified antibiotics Pugh, We Danced All Night, p. 47; Robert H. Ferrell, The Twentieth Century: An Almanac (New York: World Almanac Publications, 1984), p. 158. Penicillin would be discovered in 1928.

  6 It provided antimicrobial “Sugar Speeds Wound Healing,” People’s Pharmacy, http://www.​peoplespharmacy.​com/​2007/​09/​17/​sugar-​speeds-​wo/, accessed October 14, 2013.

  7 sugary swallow Email from Treve Williams, June 14, 2011.

  8 “sure that she liked me” Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and They Matter (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2007), p. 13. The modern discipline of ethology had not even begun when Williams had that thought. And yet his conclusion would be echoed decades later by a leader in that field. “My baseline concerning animal emotion and sentience is pretty simple,” Marc Bekoff has written. “Animals will always have their secrets, but their emotional experiences are transparent.”

  9 a life-and-death struggle Philip Wynter, “Elephants Go to War in Burma: British Officer’s Strange Task,” The Argus (Melbourne), February 29, 1944.

  10 she lifted the baby Payne, Silent Thunder. Payne describes a scene just like this in Africa.

  11 “the finest call” EB MS, p. 54.

  12 a “phut, phut, phut” sound Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 94.

  13 a female in her midthirties J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 110. He says she could live another thirty years.

  14 Retired elephants didn’t have Article fragment from the Picture Post, no publication date or page number. From the archives of Treve Williams.

  CHAPTER 12: THE JUNGLE FAMILY HAS NO WIFE

  1 not a spare ounce Document S1, p. 31.

  2 on leave once Conversation with Treve Williams on Long Island, New York, June 10, 2011.

  3 an intense love affair Email correspondence from Treve Williams, June 29, 2012.

  4 despair wasn’t unusual Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation correspondence, letter to “Wroughton,” July 8, 1925, London Metropolitan Archives, MS 40609/003. Among Williams’s young colleagues, the lack of love was a pervasive complaint. Men who stayed on the job, enduring malaria, dysentery, and broken bones, were undone by loneliness. Right at the moment Williams was in his doldrums, one of his colleagues with Bombine, P. C. Hill, was abruptly terminating a very promising career. He might have tried to conceal the reasons for his resignation, but his superior knew better. The boss wrote in a letter that Hill’s “very urgent private reasons” could only mean he had fallen for a woman. To the company, this kind of lovesickness was a hazard as real as typhus, though a girlfriend, the forest assistants knew only too well, was much harder to contract than some bacterial infection.

  5 would not marry J. H. Johnstone to Christopherton, August 17, 1928, London Metropolitan Archives, MS 40609/003.

  6 if he could hold out J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 103–7; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 45; Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, pp. 209–10. While taking a fishing vacation in a remote forest to forget his troubles, he was invited to a village’s rice festival. He seemed so pathetically loveless that he was offered a beautiful half-caste girl, who he believed was a sex slave. When he declined, he felt shaken but grateful to know he wasn’t so far gone that he would take advantage of such a creature. For love, what choices did Williams have? “It was a general custom,” one historian wrote, “from the earliest days for a liaison usually temporary, on rare occasions permanent, to be formed between Englishmen and the attractive daughters of Burma.” This was despite the British government’s efforts to discourage civil servants from the “practice of co-habitating with native girls, or accepting them as presents.”

  7 The writer George Orwell Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 211.

  8 his personal cook FOEB MS, p. 41. Joseph marched ten miles a day with the rest of the men and then got to work setting up his jungle kitchen. For a stove, he used “a twist of iron resting on two stones” over charcoal. An old kerosene tin was his oven for baking bread. He had canned goods, but he always seemed to produce meals from fresh food—vegetables picked up in little villages, bush meat Williams shot for the pot. And, day in day out, he would produce three- or four-course meals for lunch and supper.

  9 used his “stump” SOF, p. 153. San Pyu’s right arm and hand were extraordinarily strong and nimble, Williams said, and he was a master with his machete.

  10 she was gone J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 107. “While I was swimming I let her loose in a pool which was clear as gin,” Williams wrote. “She came back to the rocks three or four times and chatter-barked to me. Then I caught sight of three other otters schooling in the pool. The three soon became four, because Taupai joined their game and company. It was the last I saw of her, sporting with them in the clear water. I said good-by to her with a contented heart.”

  11 consider resigning J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 107–10. As an escape, he poured his energy into a scheme to extract green opal, even applying for a mining license in the area in which he was shown a promising streak in an outcrop of limestone. He fantasized about becoming rich, but the funny thing was that even with all the money in the world he couldn’t imagine leaving his elephants. He dreamed of using his fortune to set up a breeding program for them. When the company said it wasn’t interested in his opal scheme, he figured he had better collect himself and make a decision one way or another about his future in Burma. The fact that elephants remained an integral part of even his wildest fantasies was telling. He was hooked. He couldn’t go anywhere and leave them behind. But he would write later that in making this decision—to stay in Burma or give it all up—he merely flipped a coin. That was Billy Williams’s way of keeping private things private, of glibly narrating a story that was actually painfully close to his heart: spin a playful anecdote out of a wrenching decision. Whether arrived at through a coin toss or an agonizing soul search, it was, of course, the life with elephants that won.

  12 bleeding profusely J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 99–100. The story is told out of order in Bandoola. The incident happened two years after the stories it’s set with. And then Bandoola recuperated for a full year.

  CHAPTER 13: “THE MURDER OF ME”

  1 In 1926 Document 3, p. 2. This version is very different from the one in SOF. Williams changed the date and circumstances of the stabbing, which occurred in 1926, to fit the story he tells set in 1931. I’ve relied on private papers for the true story. EB, p. 255, also lists the incident as having taken place in 1926.

  2 attracted to trouble Document 3, p. 2.

  3 “the New Year’s resolution” SOF, p. 32.

  4 to a valley near Bertram S. Carey and Henry Newman Tuck, The Chin Hills: A History of the People, Our Dealings with Them, Their Customs and Manners, and a Gazetteer of Their Country, vol. 1 (Rangoon: Su
perintendent, Government Printing Burma, 1896), p. 6.

  5 a week later Document 3, p. 3. Differs from SOF. Ten days instead of eight.

  6 he rightly figured Alcohol is a vasodilator.

  7 never made by foreigners Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, Burmah and the Burmese (London: George Routledge, 1853), p. 23; Document 2, p.53.

  8 an unceasing hell Marc Abrahams, “Going to Great Lengths for Swear Words,” The Guardian, March 31, 2009; Mackenzie, Burmah and the Burmese, p. 24. Among the endless curses invoked against a perjurer in the Book of Oath were: “May they be destroyed by elephants, bitten and slain by serpents, killed and devoured by the devils and giants, the tigers, and other ferocious animals of the forest. May whoever asserts a falsehood be swallowed by the earth, may he perish by sudden death, may a thunderbolt from heaven slay him,—the thunderbolt which is one of the arms of the Nat Deva.”

  9 already been given Document 2, p. 56. Aung Gyaw had been filled “with a great feeling of remorse and injury far deeper than what I had suffered physically.”

  CHAPTER 14: BANDOOLA: HERO OR ROGUE?

  1 “The discharge” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 154.

  2 joined Kayem Conversation with Treve Williams on Long Island, New York, June 10, 2011.

  3 set to retire Document S1, p. 40. Harding retired about five years before Williams met Susan.

  4 Harding’s head J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 168. This story is told out of order in Bandoola. It had to have happened before he worked in Pyinmana, while he was still working the Upper Chindwin. He was in Pyinmana in 1930.

  5 nature of leadership Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 66. Years later, prominent elephant researcher Katy Payne would ponder these same indicators, and over time her thinking about elephant leadership would evolve. After witnessing group dynamics among elephants, she began to believe it was less a dictatorship of the matriarch, as was commonly thought, and more a matter of agreement and participation from all the elephants. It is complex.

  6 the trunk knocking on the ground Conversation with Dr. William Langbauer, September 5, 2012. See also Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 94.

  7 subtle cooperation Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 25.

  8 “authority without being a bully” Pugh, “Let Animals Teach You to Live,” p. 2.

  CHAPTER 15: A MURDER INVESTIGATION

  1 wear a metal bell Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 244.

  2 “If the killing” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 173.

  3 appear very remorseful Ann Belser and Marylynne Pitz, “Elephant Kills Keeper at Pittsburgh Zoo,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 19, 2002; Moss, Croze, and Lee, Amboseli Elephants, p. 124; conversation with Dr. William Langbauer, September 5, 2012. In an American zoo many years later, a generally docile elephant killed her keeper while on a walk with him and her calf. It was a misunderstanding over a squeal from her calf. When the elephant saw the keeper lying crumpled on the ground, she wrapped her trunk around him and lifted him upright. She appeared to be desperately trying to stand him up on his feet again. Another tusker J. H. Williams knew wouldn’t let anyone near the uzi he had just killed, employing a behavior scientists call “body guarding.”

  CHAPTER 16: REBELS AND REUNIONS

  1 Late in 1928 Conversation with Treve Williams, Long Island, New York, June 13, 2012.

  2 most valuable woodlands Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 227.

  3 A few years earlier In 1923. Ibid., p. 131.

  4 murder of a forest official Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, pp. 137, 138.

  5 Saya San went further Ibid., p. 138.

  6 “a small fraction” Williams, Bandoola, p. 111.

  7 three distinct chapters Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, pp. 8–13; Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 11.

  8 The country’s monarch Amato, “The White Elephant in London,” p. 31.

  9 The royal couple Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 43.

  10 Indians were recruited William Fowler, We Gave Our Today: Burma 1941–1945 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2009), p. 62.

  11 The colonialists considered The Burmese were “regarded as work-shy” according to Goodall, Exodus Burma.

  12 53 percent of the population Goodall, Exodus Burma; census from 1931.

  13 swelling in limbs Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, February 4, 2013.

  14 experimental anthrax vaccine In Williams’s first year, Bombine lost thirty-one elephants to anthrax; later he would see tolls of nearly a hundred in one season. Williams had used red ink to track where anthrax deaths had occurred. With the worst outbreaks, his little map had looked as if it were running with blood. EB MS, p. 57; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 69. The 1919–20 working season saw thirty-one elephants lost from the Bombay Burmah stables; 1923–24 was brutal with ninety-one deaths; and sixty elephants would die in 1927–28.

  15 bursts of eighteen miles an hour Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 99. Holly Williams, “How Fast Can a Human Run?,” The Independent, May 3, 2010, says the fastest runners were clocked between twenty-three mph and twenty-eight mph.

  16 Even at night in the tent J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 117. The dog had a strong work ethic, guarding any item he was told to. When Williams needed to leave him behind one morning, he figured the best method for making Ba Sein stay was to give him a freshly caught fish to guard. Ba Sein did as he was told, threatening any of the camp workers who approached. When Williams returned later, before he could get to his own tent, he was told the dog had gone mad. With the prevalence of rabies, it was a horrifyingly real prospect. Williams cautiously walked forward calling Ba Sein’s name, ready to defend himself against a frothing monster. “Then I caught sight of him,” Williams wrote. “There he was sitting on guard beside the fish, just as I’d left him. He wagged his twisted tail at me.” There was nothing wrong with his loyal dog. He was fine. He had just been doing what he was told to: scaring off anyone who came near the fish. Williams felt a wave of relief, and started joking with the animal. “ ‘Are you mad, Ba Sein?’ I asked. ‘Mad?’ he seemed to answer, ‘yes, mad with delight!’ and he rushed round my legs. We loved each other dearly.” As a reward, the fish was baked for Ba Sein and served to him on a bed of rice.

  17 Activists had discovered David I. Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 34–35.

  18 fight off the rebellion Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, pp. 209–11. Crucial to hunting down Saya San was the help given by members of one of the country’s largest minorities, the Karens. Many had converted to Christianity and were loyal to the British.

  19 Palway Creek In the Pyinmana region, near the current capital.

  20 When he fled Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar, pp. 34–35; Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, p. 209.

  CHAPTER 17: TIGER HOUR

  1 Stephen Hopwood FOEB, p. 3; SOF, p. 70. Hopwood is mentioned in many texts about Burma at the time, including Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, pp. 81, 108, 140; and in a letter from J. K. Stanford linking Hopwood to Kipling, The Kipling Journal, http://www.​johnradcliffe.​pwp.​blueyonder.​co.​uk/​textfiles/​KJ172.​txt, accessed October 25, 2013.

  2 fishing in a stream J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 180. Typical of the “conservators” of his time—he said he had shot one tiger and was hoping to bag another. Hopwood observed jungle etiquette, inviting Williams “to pitch down with him on his camp.”

  3 served as a field gunner FOEB MS, p. 3.

  4 He was said to know U Tun Yin, Wild Animals of Burma (Rangoon: Burma Civil Service, 1967), p. 136.

  5 Helen’s name FOEB MS, pp. 3, 4.

  6 “slender girl” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 180; FOEB MS, p. 31. Susan says she’s always been “one of the world’s lean kind.”

  7 She was twenty-eight Susan Williams’s passport, issued September 2, 1932, in Rangoon, documents her birthdate as September 16,
1903. From the archives of Treve Williams.

  8 her gray eyes Susan Williams’s passport, issued September 2, 1932, in Rangoon.

  9 khaki safari outfit FOEB MS, pp. 6 and 19. Susan talks about the incredible “trousseau” Hopwood paid for.

  10 “was it just my hat?” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 181.

  11 “delighted to see” FOEB, p. 61.

  12 “tiger hour” FOEB MS, p. 22.

  13 troubled global economy Ferrell, Twentieth Century, p. 166. Western nations were suffering high unemployment, bank failures, and governments struggling with debt and the inability to pay war reparations.

  14 possibility of timber extraction Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74.

  15 he could handle anything FOEB, p. 72. While sitting by the fire, suddenly, Molly became alarmed—the hair of her back standing straight as she leaped up from under Susan’s legs. The dog ran to Williams and stood wild-eyed, staring into the darkness, where they then heard the muffled cough of a big cat. Williams said only a tiger or leopard would inspire such terror in the dog. Although bold leopards had sometimes invaded camp, Williams was certain that the fire would keep it at bay. He patted Molly, speaking to her reassuringly. Susan noticed how the dog visibly relaxed some and even wagged her tail, but, still she remained alert, and would not sit down. She and Jim talked for a while longer and then Williams saw that his dog was still anxious. He cupped Molly’s face in his hands, looked lovingly at her, and said, “It’s all right, old girl—he’s gone long ago.”