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

  16 most intelligent dog J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 206.

  17 “a lovely dog” FOEB MS, p. 20. Susan genuinely loved dogs. She had been pining for one since reaching Burma, but was forbidden by Hopwood because of the prevalence of rabies. She had taken in a little street dog anyway, and when it showed signs of the disease, Susan had to be treated at the Pasteur Institute in Rangoon with a series of painful injections to her abdomen using a large needle.

  18 most fashionable suburb “Burma: Yogi v. Commissars,” Time magazine, October 4, 1948.

  19 He Man replied SOF, p. 73.

  20 The thousand-year-old Buddhist shrine James, Snake Charmer, p. 108.

  21 “floodlights by night” Christian, “Burma: Where India and China Meet,” p. 489.

  22 words of W. Somerset Maugham W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour (Garden City: Doubleday, 1930), p. 8.

  23 many lamps Ibid., p. 11.

  24 song of the cicadas Ethel Mannin, Land of the Crested Lion (London: Jarrolds, 1955), p. 22.

  25 thousands of gold and silver bells Jamie James, “Glorious Golden Pagoda,” The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2008.

  26 “Ghoulies and Pixies” EB MS, p. 1.

  27 He was attracted to the unknown Email from Treve Williams, April 4, 2012.

  28 “community of all living creatures” Document fragment 21, p. 4.

  29 “It was not necessary” SOF, p. 81.

  CHAPTER 18: THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

  1 Susan Margaret Rowland Marriage certificate, All Saints, Evesham Parish, No. 142, September 9, 1932.

  2 consisting of 550 islands Tony Perrottet, “Babar and Me and the Deep Blue Sea,” Condé Nast Traveler, January 2010.

  3 Some of the islands Teresa Levonian Cole, “Would You Andaman Eve It?,” The Guardian, March 3, 2007.

  4 Ptolemy called them Ibid.; Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Henry Yule, book 3, chapter 13.

  5 Williams’s Burmese friends Partial document titled “Andaman Diary,” p. 4. From the archives of Treve Williams.

  6 He would have three Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74.

  7 “I had no briefing” “Andaman Diary,” p. 1.

  8 The only timberwork Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74.

  9 “a Forest engineer” “Andaman Diary,” p. 1. In SOF, his name is spelled Jeff, but in “Andaman Diary” it is Geoff. Williams places the name in quotes signifying, presumably, that it is a pseudonym anyway.

  10 He believed now SOF, p. 110.

  11 thousands of varieties Ibid., p. 136; Teresa Levonian Cole, “Only Halfway to Paradise,” The Sunday Telegraph (London), March 3, 2007.

  12 saltwater crocodiles Cole, “Only Halfway to Paradise.”

  13 robber crabs Perrottet, “Babar and Me and the Deep Blue Sea.”

  14 Singapore-based “Andaman Diary,” p. 2.

  15 Supermarine Southampton flying boats In Susan Williams’s memoir, and in Williams’s original manuscript, these planes are referred to as Sunderland flying boats, but this model plane was not yet in the air at that date. In SOF, the planes are identified as Southamptons. Supermarine Southamptons were popular British planes between WWI and WWII, and fit the time frame. It’s likely that his editors caught the error and fixed it for the published book.

  16 There was plenty of timber Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74. This source says there was no teak.

  17 “You’re on the wrong ship” FOEB MS, p. 33;

  18 a terrible “heartache” “Andaman Diary,” p. 1.

  CHAPTER 19: SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW

  1 “It was a glorious morning” FOEB MS, p. 39.

  2 At 9:30 a.m. Wedding registry from the archives at Evesham Parish, scan of page provided by Katy Tarplee, parish administrator, Church House, Market Place, Evesham; FOEB MS, p. 38.

  3 well-stocked saloon car FOEB, p. 93; John Foster Eraser, S. Edward Lunn, and F. H. Lowe, Round the World on a Wheel: Being the Narrative of a Bicycle Ride of Nineteen Thousand Two Hundred and Thirty-Seven Miles Through Seventeen Countries and Across Three Continents (London: Methuen, 1899).

  4 the country’s second largest city Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 13.

  5 spectacular orchids Christian, “Burma: Where India and China Meet,” p. 504.

  6 Jim and Susan walked FOEB, p. 103.

  7 grow chili peppers FOEB MS, p. 51.

  8 Installing the “wireless” Stanford, Far Ridges, pp. 101–2.

  9 The connection was so deeply felt Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 31, 2013.

  10 wool blankets FOEB MS, p. 62. One night, they heard coughing coming from the area where the men slept. Jim shouted out, asking who it was. “Old Joseph appeared,” Susan wrote, “his teeth chattering as if he was in a bout of fever.” “How many blankets have you got old chap?” Jim asked. “Only this one Sahib,” Joseph said, as he lifted a tissue-thin cotton blanket from his shoulders. Jim, as was his tradition, had issued warm wool blankets to each man at the start of the cold season, but they always seemed to disappear, often lost in card games. Joseph, however, had sent the substantial blanket off to his wife and children. Jim looked at Susan and she went off to dig one of their two spares out of a trunk.

  11 a sure death sentence J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 107.

  12 field clinics FOEB, pp. 176–77. One of Williams’s most amazing cases was a tree feller who had been attacked by a sun bear. These small bears with sleek black hair and distinctive orange-yellow V-shaped necklaces of fur have sickle-shaped claws. Their jaws are strong enough to crack nuts. After tangling with the bear, the man was carried in to Williams. A huge sheet of his scalp had been ripped from his skull and dangled down, covering his face. Williams gently raised the gory mass and held it away from the man’s face. He cut the hair off, cleaned everything, folded the flap of skin back over the man’s head, and stitched it. The man’s eyeball was dangling down his cheek. Williams gently pressed it back into its socket, and then sewed up deep gashes in his lips and jaw, where even the bone had been exposed.

  13 “The wonderful beauty” FOEB MS, p. 53.

  14 And everywhere leeches Kingdon Ward, In Farthest Burma, p. 220. Frank Kingdon-Ward, the fearless English botanist who would survive earthquakes, an impaling, and a perilous spill from a cliff, traveled extensively in Burma and wrote with horror about the leeches. “As for me,” he wrote, “leeches entered literally every orifice except my mouth, and I became so accustomed to the little cutting bite, like the caress of a razor, that I scarcely noticed it at the time. On two occasions leeches obtained such strategic positions that I only noticed them just in time to prevent very serious, if not fatal, consequences.” Men feared them lodging in the penis or anus. They swarmed the traveler, finding purchase on his scalp, armpits, inside his ears, “in fact everywhere,” he said.

  15 Gerry Carol FOEB MS, p. 77. Gerry Carol is called “Tony Stewart” in her published book, p. 139.

  16 trebling the quinine Writing fragment entitled “Second Story, Second Roll: Hydrophobia, etc.,” by J. H. Williams, p. 23. From the archives of Treve Williams.

  CHAPTER 20: INTO THE CAULDRON

  1 As a boss Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 96, says Williams was promoted to forest manager in 1930.

  2 “punkah-wallahs” FOEB, p. 185.

  3 Kipling had seen Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” p. 152.

  4 Aung Net knelt J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 187.

  5 The ripples of the Great Depression Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 140.

  6 By the end of the month FOEB MS, p. 76. The night before the Williamses departed, a wild party was thrown for them in the military policeman’s bungalow. Susan broke away early to go sleep on the boat that would take them across the Chindwin in the morning, and at about two thirty was awakened by Williams and two pals. After more drinking aboard the launch, the three men ran as fast as they could dow
n the wobbly gangway. They all made it, and as the two pals sang “Good-bye, Billy Old Boy,” Williams tried to run back aboard, but he fell into the murky river, where he had to be retrieved “drenched and muddy.”

  7 He sent the snakeskin FOEB, pp. 218–21. Treve Williams still has this snakeskin in a cupboard in Tasmania.

  8 Bandoola was dismissed J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 137–40. Williams thought back to a situation similar to this one in which Bandoola’s athleticism and intellect had shined. It took place in a dark, steep gorge along the Upper Chindwin. The floor of it was strewn with boulders the size of houses. After the monsoon, when the water level dropped to a trickle, thousands of logs, some forty-five feet long and weighing a few tons, were left stranded. They were piled up on one another, jammed against a rock wall, or teetering dangerously on top of boulders.

  With an assistant, whom Williams called “Gerry Dawson” in his writing, Williams called for nine elephants (ten was considered an unlucky number by the riders). The elephants arrived and set to work. While the other elephants began simply removing logs one by one, Bandoola chose a very different strategy. He would gingerly walk up on the pile until he came to a wobbly log. That’s precisely what he was looking for: the keystone. Backing away to solid ground, he would then reach up to move that one creaking log, and watch the rest of the pile loosen and collapse like a house of cards.

  Williams was accustomed to Bandoola’s grasp of physics, but Dawson, who had worked with many other elephants, was astounded. As it would turn out, Dawson was not as careful with timber as Bandoola had been. Later, like many foresters, he came to an unfortunate end. His forearm was “flattened to pulp” in an avalanche he had set off with dynamite. He begged his helper to cut off his arm. The reluctant man sawed at the flesh, but failed to amputate. By the time Dawson was taken to a hospital, gangrene had set in and he died. He left behind two Burmese wives who were twin sisters.

  9 using their bodies as supports This has been seen often and is described by Katy Payne in Silent Thunder, p. 75. See also Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 72–73; Moss, Croze, and Lee, Amboseli Elephants, p. 123.

  10 “Send for Poo Zone” EB, p. 224. While they waited for the elephants to arrive, Williams and the men worked hard to keep Bandoola’s thoughts here on Earth, trying to keep his spirit from wandering to another realm. In the amalgam of beliefs in Burma, it was thought that the soul took the form of an invisible butterfly, or leippya. In death, or even sometimes just in sleep, the winged spirit could leave the body and return to it or it could be captured and kept away. The men tickled the sick elephant, slapped him, and doused him with water in futile attempts to get him up. All the efforts were more torture than help.

  11 He began to clear away Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses, pp. 16–17. It might seem comical, but this sort of act could have proved deadly as it would years later for a German zookeeper. The man was trying to help a constipated bull elephant. But the animal expelled an enormous wave of diarrhea just as the keeper was administering an enema. The avalanche of waste knocked the man down, and he was suffocated by the subsequent output.

  12 venom stronger than James, Snake Charmer, pp. 116, 145.

  13 By summer Although Susan says Jeremy was born in England, Treve says he was born in Burma, and, in fact, this would square with when she says she was pregnant and when her passport shows her going home to England.

  14 He had not been bitten J. H. Williams, “Second Story, Second Roll: Hydrophobia, etc.,” p. 23.

  15 their nanny, Ma Kin Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, July 29, 2013.

  16 at Colombo Susan Williams’s passport, stamped by Harbour Police, Colombo [Sri Lanka], November 12, 1934.

  17 when tragedy struck Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 28, 2012.

  18 “died quite suddenly” FOEB, p. 228.

  19 He was buried Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 28, 2012; FOEB, p. 236.

  20 It seemed the führer’s lesson David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: the American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945, Oxford History of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 383–94.

  21 the couple returned to Burma T. Donald Carter, “The Mammals of the Vernay-Hopwood Chindwin Expedition, Northern Burma,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 82, no 4. Susan corresponded with Uncle Pop, who was still going strong. In fact, he was preparing to lead a large expedition from the American Museum of Natural History on a mammal-collecting trip in the far northern reaches of the country.

  22 the Latin names To her, geraniums were Pelargonium x hortorum and the sunflowers, Helianthus annuus. Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 31, 2013.

  23 Over the next year Ferrell, Twentieth Century, p. 187.

  24 In April 1937 Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 62.

  25 In the fall FOEB, p. 279.

  26 on December 12, 1937 Handwritten notation on Susan Williams’s passport: “Treve 12.12.37.”

  27 Aung Net taught him Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, June 6, 2013.

  28 In the spring of 1938 Ferrell, Twentieth Century, pp. 201–2. And Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, The Century (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 210.

  29 received home leave Susan Williams’s passport and her handwritten timeline of their life in Burma, from the archives of Treve Williams. See also EB, p. 190.

  30 Geoff Bostock lived The Bostocks’ daughter Susan was in school in England during the war. Correspondence between Evelyn Bostock (wife of Bombay Burmah manager Geoff Bostock) and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, between December 21, 1941, and March 25, 1942, from the family archives of John Bostock. See also Goodall, Exodus Burma: “in one of the most palatial private houses in Maymyo—Woodstock.”

  31 “Mummy” and “Daddy” Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke via Skype, May 30, 2013.

  32 Susan refused Ibid.

  33 The Japanese had also landed Goodall, Exodus Burma: “on a beach in Malaya.”

  34 nearly a thousand men Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 35.

  35 But before Christmas Goodall, Exodus Burma.

  CHAPTER 21: FLEEING BURMA

  1 And on January 20, 1942 Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 89.

  2 thought it premature Goodall, Exodus Burma: “before it was too late,” “heavily criticised.”

  3 The company would allow Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, February 6, 1942, from the family archives of John Bostock.

  4 Horses and pets Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 22.

  5 buried valuables in their gardens Goodall, Exodus Burma: “glass, silver and even antique furniture.”

  6 transferred cash Ibid.

  7 Jim grabbed a few essentials FOEB, pp. 291–92.

  8 Burma was an objective Fowler, We Gave Our Today, pp. 63–64.

  9 At one point Tim Harper, “The Second World War: Day 3: Global War: Japan’s Gigantic Gamble,” The Guardian, September 7, 2009.

  10 For the most part Max Hastings, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. 59.

  11 “Asia for the Asiatics” Goodall, Exodus Burma.

  12 A large portion of the Karens Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, p. 210; Harper, “Second World War.”

  13 Some in Burma Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 65.

  14 About eighteen thousand Harper, “Second World War.”

  15 some who had hoped Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 75.

  16 A report at the time Hastings, Retribution, p. 86.

  17 pregnant again FOEB, p. 291.

  18 If Rangoon Goodall, Exodus Burma: “did not order”; FOEB, p. 295; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 91. The evacuees were completely isolated. Mail service was nearly shut down entirely. There was no way to communicate with their families back home in England or with their husbands in country—and they had good reas
on to worry for them: Two of the company’s forest officers would soon be killed in Japanese attacks. Burma was descending into chaos. On February 8, 1942, Governor-General Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith went on the wireless to say he was determined to hold Rangoon, though nonessential workers were advised to seek shelter outside the city. He did not order an evacuation.

  19 would be invaluable Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 52.

  20 one high court judge Mr. Justice Henry Benedict Linthwaite Braund (late of the Allahabad High Court), “The Manipur Road: What Has Been Achieved,” publication and date unknown.

  21 Williams’s friend and boss “Evacuation Scheme,” fourteen-page report prepared by Geoff Bostock outlining possible routes and transportation and supply requirements for evacuating the wives and children of Bombay Burmah employees in 1942. From the family archives of John Bostock.

  22 It was February 1942 EB, p. 194.

  23 Tokyo was relentless Harper, “Second World War”; EB MS.

  24 Williams and Bostock Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942, from the family archives of John Bostock; “Trekking from Burma: Women and Children Cross Mountains: Extracts from a Letter Written by the Daughter of a Former Birmingham Manufacturer Describing How She and Other Refugees Escaped from Burma,” March 18, 1942. Appears to have been written by Evelyn Bostock; from the family archives of John Bostock.

  25 They left Mawlaik Ibid.

  26 Behind the families Ibid.

  27 The food stocks Ibid.

  28 A pleasant feeling EB, p. 196.

  29 women and children sought safety Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942.

  30 On Monday, March 2, 1942 This date is provided by the diary account of an evacuee, Jose Johnson, whose story and diary entries are published by the BBC as part of their series, “WW2 People’s War: An Archive of World War Two Memories—Written by the Public, Gathered by the BBC,” http://www.​bbc.​co.​uk/​ww2peopleswar/​stories/​04/​a3338804.​shtml, accessed October 25, 2013.

  31 The large outpost Goodall, Exodus Burma.