533. Wojtek: The Bear Who Beat the Nazis

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Speaker 2 We were making our way through the deserted fields looking for stray hens and eggs when a nearby artillery unit opened fire.

Speaker 2 We went to look and found a battery of Polish gunners setting up for a barrage. The gun sight was hidden in a clearing within a large wood.

Speaker 2 As we watched, suddenly out of the wood came a large bear walking on its hind legs. It seemed to be carrying something.

Speaker 2 Both Vincent and I shouted a warning to the gunners that a bear was going towards them, them, but nobody responded.

Speaker 2 The bear went up to the trail legs of the artillery gun and placed a shell on the ground. The bear then went back into the wood and reappeared with another shell.

Speaker 2 By this time, we'd realised that the bear was tame and most likely a circus bear. We just went on our way.

Speaker 2 That was John Clark, and in April 1944, he was serving with the Black Watch in the Monte Cassino campaign, one of the most celebrated campaigns of the Second World World War, the Battle for Italy.

Speaker 2 And he is remembering an incident near the village of Aqua Fondata, which is six miles from Monte Cassino, and he and his comrade Vincent were foraging for food.

Speaker 2 And that story, Tom, which you have quoted, it's actually quoted by Eileen Orr in her book, Wojtek the Bear, Polish War Hero.

Speaker 2 And as you say in your notes, it's like an armoured bear from Philip Pullman's stories. The last episode, we were talking about the fate of Poland and we talked a lot about Danzig, Gdansk.

Speaker 2 There's a brilliant museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. And as is my wont when I went there with Sambrod Jr., we went to the shop to look for merch.

Speaker 2 And they didn't have very much, I have to say, but what they did have was dozens of copies of a children's book in Polish about this bear, Wojtek, who is... an absolute folk hero in Poland, isn't he?

Speaker 2 And a symbol of Polish resistance and Polish heroism in the Second World War.

Speaker 1 And I think every Polish friend I've got has said, do you know the story of Wojtek?

Speaker 1 So a particular shout out if she's listening to this to Bazena, who first mentioned Wojtek to us and in fact gave us a children's book about it.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was the one that you saw in the shop in Gdańsk.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 this is about a bear, but... important to emphasize that it's about a Polish bear.

Speaker 1 So in the account that you read about those British officers walking the battlefield of Monte Cassino, the bear is helping Polish gunners, and these Polish gunners are fighting on the British side against the Germans.

Speaker 1 And so in a sense, this is what I said at the end of our previous series, that we wanted to give a kind of coder to that story. Terribly dark, bleak, somber story.

Speaker 1 But I guess this is also a palate cleanser. It's a way of

Speaker 1 kind of plunging back into the heart of darkness, but coming out perhaps the other side.

Speaker 1 And I think, I mean, I don't want to speak for Polish people, maybe they can correct me, but I think that is, that is a huge part of why the incredible story of Wojtek, the bear who basically becomes a Polish soldier, why it has the kind of resonance that it does.

Speaker 1 So before we come to Wojtek,

Speaker 1 we've also done a number of episodes on famous animals in history. So we've done dogs, we've done monkeys, and we have actually already had a number of bears on the rest is history.

Speaker 1 So we did an episode on the inauguration of the Colosseum in AD 80 and that featured a bear from Caledonia.

Speaker 1 There's the polar bear that was given to Henry III by the King of Norway in 1252 and which was kept in the Tower of London.

Speaker 1 And then there was Lord Byron who kept a bear when he was a student at Trinity. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 1 he'd been told he couldn't have a dog. So he wrote in his diary, I've got a new friend, the finest in the world.

Speaker 1 When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was he should sit for a fellowship. So Byron and his bear.

Speaker 2 None of these were military bears. None of these were fighting bears.
And Voitek is a fighting bear.

Speaker 1 Voitec is a military bear. There are actually other examples of bears who served as mascots in war.
Probably the most famous of these is an American black bear who was called Winnipeg.

Speaker 1 And Winnipeg came into the possession of a guy who originally had come from Birmingham.

Speaker 1 So he was a Brummy who'd emigrated to Canada and he'd settled in Winnipeg in Manitoba and there he'd become a vet.

Speaker 1 And then in 1914, war broke out and the news came to Canada, you know, dominion in the British Empire. So lots of Canadians signed up to fight for king and country.

Speaker 1 And Harry Colborne, he got the train from Winnipeg to get shipped for Britain.

Speaker 1 And at a station in Ontario, he got off the platform and there, for reasons that are not entirely clear, because it seems quite an odd thing to be for sale. But

Speaker 1 he gets an orphaned bear cub. And because he's already feeling homesick for his native town of Winnipeg, he calls this bear Winnie, takes him,

Speaker 1 this orphaned bear with him to Britain, trains with the Canadian unit that he signed up to. And then in December 1914, he crosses the Channel to go and fight on the Western Front.

Speaker 1 And he can't take this orphaned bear with him. So he donates it to the London Zoo.
So Winnie becomes one of the star attractions in London Zoo.

Speaker 1 And Winnie is there the whole way through the First World War and stays there after the First World War. And in 1924, a writer called A.
A.

Speaker 1 Milne takes a son who's a little boy called Christopher Robin to see Winnie, this Canadian black bear.

Speaker 1 And Christopher Robin

Speaker 1 thinks this bear is wonderful, goes back home and changes the name of his teddy bear from Edward Bear to Winnie the Pooh.

Speaker 2 That's Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh was this.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Wow, that's amazing.
But the real Winnie the Pooh, as in Winnipeg, never saw action.

Speaker 2 Doesn't seem like action. So there's a big difference with VoiceX.

Speaker 1 Okay, so there is another famous bear that does see action, because this is a bear who gets taken up in the Korean war by a US paratrooper unit

Speaker 1 and she's bought as a cub from a Japanese zoo say right at the beginning of the Korean war in 1953 and the paratroopers you know they go to Korea and they pick her up in planes and make her do paratroop jumps god that's a shock for a bear I mean does she does she do it does she like it well she hates it I mean she absolutely hates it of course I mean you you know you're a bear and you're being chucked out of a plane of course you're going to hate it and on her second jump understandably she's so upset that she starts biting the soldiers as they try to push her out and then on her fourth attempt she actually she chews up the boot of a soldier but they keep doing it they keep chucking her out of the plane with her parachute and she ends up garlanded with honors so she wins a parachutist badge she wins a purple heart she wins a korean service medal but i think it's fair to say that she's not an enthusiastic paratrooper.

Speaker 1 She doesn't enjoy it. And in 1954, so she's only sees a year's service.

Speaker 1 she's discharged and sent to lincoln park zoo in chicago so we could have gone to lincoln park zoo when we were in america couldn't we we were in chicago yeah we never did so those i guess are the two bears who who serve as mascots and who have have kind of won a certain measure of fame but voitec's story is a different order

Speaker 1 I think it's the strangest, it's the most moving, and it's definitely the most historically resonant of any bear, not just a military bear, but any bear in history. Because Wojtek isn't just a mascot.

Speaker 1 He's literally enrolled in the Polish army as a private for reasons that we'll come to.

Speaker 2 And rises, right, and is promoted.

Speaker 1 Probably gets promotion to a corporal. There's kind of debate about this, but I think almost certainly becomes a corporal in the Polish army.

Speaker 1 And the reason that it's a moving story is that Wojtek, who is, again, like previous, the two previous bears that we talked about, is bought as a cub.

Speaker 1 He grows up and he provides an emotional focus for soldiers who had been uprooted from their homeland, many of them lost their families, had suffered unspeakable traumas.

Speaker 1 And this bear provided them with a focus for kind of wellsprings of love that perhaps otherwise wouldn't have had a focus.

Speaker 1 And I think that this is a huge part of why Wojtek is so famous and celebrated in Poland.

Speaker 1 But I have to say, there's also a personal link for me because as we will find out, Wojtek ends up very close to the banks of the Tweed.

Speaker 2 Right, where you've got your house.

Speaker 1 My Scottish estate.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, it's kind of mad to say this about, you know, a bear. But I think his story really does provide a window onto the kind of the miseries of Polish history in the 1940s.
But

Speaker 1 it is also, it's a kind of charming story at the same time. And it's one one that has a, it feels like it has a kind of personal connection to me.

Speaker 1 So it's, it's a story I've wanted to do for a very, very long time.

Speaker 2 All right, let's put it back into the context. Let's let's pick up in a way from where we ended that that series.
So Poland was defeated, you know, swiftly by the Nazis.

Speaker 2 Warsaw taken, and then Poland was divided up, and Poland vanishes from the map of Europe. But of course, a lot of the Polish army have escaped, haven't they? They've crossed the border into Romania.

Speaker 2 And a lot of Poles who are scattered are determined to continue the struggle, aren't they? They have not yet given up. Their government in exile and so on.

Speaker 2 So how does Voitex sort of fit into that story?

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 as you say, Poland is defeated.

Speaker 1 It's carved up. It vanishes from the map.
But there are Poles who want to continue the fight. And basically, there are three ways in which Poles are able to do this.

Speaker 1 And the first and by far, I guess, the most dangerous is to continue the fight in Poland itself.

Speaker 1 And as you said in the previous episode, the German occupying forces have targeted the Polish elites for complete elimination.

Speaker 1 And their aim is to reduce the mass of the Polish population to kind of helitage, to the status of the helots that the Spartans used as their slave labor.

Speaker 1 That's what the Germans want to make the Poles become. And so effectively, for lots of Polish young men, They feel that

Speaker 1 resistance, I mean, why wouldn't you resist? Because the alternative is either enslavement or extermination. And this is something that they are kind of facing up to very, very early on.

Speaker 1 So in April 1940, forced conscription in Germany is introduced. Polish young men are kind of rounded up and taken as slave labor into Germany.

Speaker 1 And so rather than submit to that, lots of Poles take to the forests. And this is the genesis of the Polish resistance.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 It's like something out of medieval history. They're centered in the vast woods and forests that spread over much of Poland.

Speaker 1 And by 1943, the Polish resistance numbers almost half a million, which is by far the largest resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Speaker 1 But its ultimate fate is miserable because it's destroyed by the Germans. I mean, this is kind of they're embroiled in the Warsaw Rising and all that.
And then, of course, by the Soviets who are...

Speaker 1 invading and who are not friends of the Polish resistance, want to see it wiped out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a terrible story.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure one day we'll we'll come to that awful story.

Speaker 1 The other option, if you have managed to get outside Poland, is to continue the fight by signing up perhaps with the French and then after the fall of France with Britain.

Speaker 1 And the Polish forces in Britain come to number almost 80,000. So we talked yesterday about how lots of Polish pilots fight for the RAF.
in the Battle of Britain, perform heroically.

Speaker 1 Polish sailors join the Royal Navy. Churchill admires them hugely.

Speaker 1 I think that they garner a great deal of sympathy in Britain, both for the fate of their country, for the evident heroism with which they're defending Britain, and I suspect a measure of guilt at the failure of Britain to come to Poland's rescue.

Speaker 1 And these soldiers are stationed, lots of them are stationed in Scotland. They are posted along

Speaker 1 the eastern Scottish coastline to ward off a possible invasion from Norway. And one of the places where a camp is set up is above the Tweed, just downriver from Berwick.

Speaker 1 And this camp is called Winfield Camp. It's a center for lots of Poles there.

Speaker 1 So there is, of course, a third reservoir of potential soldiers that is waiting to be tapped on when the Soviet Union enters into alliance with Britain in the wake of Operation Barbarossa, which in turn means that the Poles and the Russians are then fighting on the same side.

Speaker 1 But before that,

Speaker 1 the fate of Poles in Soviet-occupied Poland is pretty much as grim as it had been for the Polish elites in Germany, because the Soviets want to eliminate them just as much as the Germans do.

Speaker 1 And you described how in your Brevora form the episode that you did before this, how the Soviet forces had invaded Poland on the 17th of September 1939 in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Speaker 1 It comes as a total surprise to the Poles, to the Western Allies. The Polish forces are already disintegrating and this just completes that process.
200,000 prisoners of war are taken.

Speaker 1 15,000 of these are officers and these are taken to three camps in Russia and Ukraine and then they vanish. And no one is really sure what happens to them.

Speaker 1 And the truth is only discovered later in the war, in the wake of Operation Barbarossa, when the Germans are invading, going into Russia into Ukraine and in the forest called Katyn they discover the corpses of 5,000 murdered Polish officers and the Germans the Germans with supreme hypocrisy trumpet this as an example of Soviet war crimes which of course it is but it ignores the fact that the Germans are doing

Speaker 1 committing even worse crimes.

Speaker 1 And these officers who were found in Katyn, they'd been killed in March 1940 along with all the other Polish officers on Stalin's personal orders.

Speaker 1 But it's not just, as we said, it's not just the officers who are dispatched. So in February 1940, the Soviet authorities had begun the kind of mass expulsion of the Polish civilian population.

Speaker 1 And the NKVD, which is the kind of

Speaker 1 predecessor of the KGB, had begun herding up Polish families, taking them to railway stations, cramming them into cattle wagons, sending them off eastwards towards Siberia.

Speaker 1 And these are scenes that are very reminiscent of the fate of Jews in occupied Nazi Europe who are being rounded up and put in cattle wagons, unheated. Of course.
Women, children, as well as men,

Speaker 1 no food, no drink, freezing cold.

Speaker 1 And it's been estimated that by early 1941, about one and a half million Poles have been driven into exile.

Speaker 1 And that of these, by the summer of nineteen forty one, between a third and a half of all these Poles who've been deported are dead either from malnutrition or from the cold or from exhaustion or of course from from disease so it's the same process of

Speaker 2 genocidal expulsions that you're seeing in Nazi Germany and which are much better known but then it all changes of course in the summer of 1941 because on the 22nd of June Hitler launches operation barbarossa and suddenly the soviet union goes from being effectively Hitler's ally to

Speaker 2 Britain's ally, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 And that changes the whole story for the Poles who are in the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's a Polish government in exile by this point in London, which means that they're unable really to resist British pressure.

Speaker 1 And Britain wants this Polish government in exile essentially to ally itself to the Soviet Union, which of course is really tough for the Poles to to do.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, the Soviet Union has dismembered their country, stabbed them in the back, deported millions of their fellow citizens.

Speaker 1 But they do it, and one of the reasons that they do it is that they see that this is a way to secure the release of the Poles who have been kept prisoner in the Soviet Union.

Speaker 1 And among these prisoners is one of the very few Polish officers who had been deported to have survived Soviet captivity. And this is a man called Władysław Anders.

Speaker 1 And he had spent, so he hadn't been taken into a wood and shot. He'd been taken to the Lubyanka, the NKVD prison, and he'd spent months there, a kind of horrendous experience of imprisonment.

Speaker 1 But then he's released. And initially,

Speaker 1 he thinks, if I'm going to carry on the fight against the Germans, then I'm going to have to do it with the Red Army.

Speaker 1 But he realizes very rapidly that Stalin is not going to allow an autonomous Polish military force to assemble in the Soviet Union. You know, the risk, in Stalin's opinion, is too great.

Speaker 1 And so, therefore, Anders starts thinking, well,

Speaker 1 we should try and get these guys out of the Soviet Union altogether and see if we could maybe fight with the British. And Stalin is also very keen to see the back of them.

Speaker 1 And so, Stalin and Anders agree that Stalin will allow Polish prisoners to travel down to the Caspian Sea, to sail across the Caspian Sea and land in Iran.

Speaker 1 And the reason for that is that there is a British military presence in Iran because at this time Iran is under joint Soviet, US and British occupation.

Speaker 1 And specifically, the rendezvous is a port called Pahlevi on the Caspian Sea that I gather is now called Bandar-e-Anzali.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 throughout the spring and summer of 1942, over 100,000 Poles, and this includes women and children, are ferried across the Caspian Sea.

Speaker 1 You know, they've traveled all the way across the Soviet Union from the camps that they were being kept in. They've traveled there and they're now being ferried across the Caspian Sea.

Speaker 1 And they arrive in Palevi, and they're in a terrible condition. You know,

Speaker 1 they're hunger-ravaged, they're disease-ridden, they're shattered, they've traveled vast, vast distances.

Speaker 1 And I think British officers, looking certainly at the men, think, oh, God, I mean, how are we ever going to get these people into a condition to fight?

Speaker 1 But the British have brought food, medicine, ambulances. And although lots of Poles do die, there are also lots who then start on the road to recovery.

Speaker 1 And civilians are sent to camps outside Tehran and Isfahan in Iran.

Speaker 1 And then they are sorted out and they're sent onwards to various territories within the British Empire. So Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, Kenya.

Speaker 1 and lots of these Poles, I mean, actually, they kind of end up settling in these various countries and staying there for good.

Speaker 1 But the plan for the young men, these Poles who have come to join the British to fight the Nazi enemy, the plan for them is to send them from Iran through Iraq to Palestine to train them.

Speaker 1 to get them ready to join British forces and if needs be to join the fight against Rommel, who at the time is kind of advancing across North Africa towards Egypt.

Speaker 1 And this force of Poles,

Speaker 1 they can't call it the First Polish Corps because the First Polish Corps is, you know, that's the body of Poles who are stationed in Britain.

Speaker 1 So they become the second Polish Corps and the nickname that they get given is the Anders Army.

Speaker 2 Brilliant. I have to say, I've actually got two different friends who have grandparents, I think, who were involved in that movement of people.

Speaker 2 So I've got a friend called Matt Kelly, who's a historian, and my friend Anna as well. And they are unbelievable stories.

Speaker 2 I mean these people who were deported east from the Polish borderlands, they went to Russia and crossing the Caspian Sea, going across Iran, going across the Middle East.

Speaker 2 And then often people would end up in some people ended up in Africa, some people ended up in Britain. I mean, it is mind-boggling.
It's like something from a science fiction book or something.

Speaker 1 And so little known in this country, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Although there's actually quite a few people in Britain.

Speaker 2 You know, there's a kind kind of anglo-polish community with roots in this movement of people in this mass migration yeah but anyway it's an incredible story and this is the point where voitec enters the story when the bear finally appears so how does the bear turn up i mean it has the force of a kind of folktale i think uh and as with a folktale there are various accounts of exactly how vojtech

Speaker 1 comes to be a part of this movement of Polish of Polish troops to Palestine. But I think the basic outline is clear.

Speaker 1 So there's a group of Polish soldiers, maybe officers, maybe private soldiers, accounts differ, and they're in the wilds outside Tehran.

Speaker 1 And there they meet a young Iranian boy and he has a sack tied around his neck. And he opens up the sack and inside it there is a tiny bear cub.

Speaker 1 And the boy tells the Poles that the mother of this cub had been shot by hunters and the cub had been abandoned and the boy had found it.

Speaker 1 And it's something that he can sell because it's the customary fate of abandoned cubs to be sold to trainers who will raise them as dancing bears.

Speaker 1 And to be a dancing bear is hideous. I mean, you're chained, you're kind of whipped, you're prodded, you have a miserable life.

Speaker 1 So the Poles know this and obviously have a sense of fellow feeling for an animal that has suffered bereavement and faces a terrible future. So they buy it from

Speaker 1 the boy, either.

Speaker 2 With what? With food?

Speaker 1 Probably barter or food, or maybe they've got a few coins. Anyway, they come into possession of this bear cub.

Speaker 1 And what happens next?

Speaker 1 various stories. So one story says that this cub is bought by a Polish officer who gives it to the niece of another officer.
And this niece is called Irina.

Speaker 1 And she looks after the cub for three months in the civilian transit camp where she's been stationed. And the bear is kind of very mischievous, full of fun.

Speaker 1 It's clearly not a good place for a kind of wild animal to be kept. And so Irina gives it to the army as a mascot.

Speaker 1 And the bear ends up being given by a lieutenant in Anders's army to Polish soldiers in the second transport company. And these have already reached a base at Gederah in Palestine.

Speaker 1 So that's one account. Another account, and this is the one you'll get in Eileen Orr's book, which is a wonderful account of Wojtek.

Speaker 1 And she says that actually it was Polish privates in the second transport company had come into possession with Voitec right from the beginning, that they were the ones who had negotiated with this Iranian boy, and that they had kept the bear with them as they traveled to Palestine because they weren't really allowed to have a bear with them.

Speaker 1 And when their commanding officer is told,

Speaker 1 we're really sorry, sir,

Speaker 1 we've got this bear cub, yeah he allows them to keep it because he recognizes that it's really good for their morale that the soldiers are devoted to the cub and that it's kind of raised their spirits and it's these guys in the second transport company who give the bear its name right which is vojtec which is a sort of diminutive of wojciek which is a proper Polish name.

Speaker 1 So the bear is variously known, I think, by Poles as Wojciech or Wojtek. So Wojciech is the formal, Wojtek is the informal, and it means happy warrior.
Right.

Speaker 1 And in due course, Voitek grows up to full size. He's absolutely enormous bear.
And then another Wojtek joins the company.

Speaker 1 And so the bear is called Big Voitek and the soldier is called Little Vojtek. So his full name is Big Voitek.
But as a cub.

Speaker 1 Voitek is given a kind of carer, one of the Polish soldiers in the Second Transport Company. And this is a guy called Peter Prendis.
And most of the soldiers in Second Transport Company are young.

Speaker 1 they're kind of teenage or early 20s but peter is um he's 46 and he's probably the oldest soldier in the company and that is why he is given responsibility for the bear it's thought that he is he's the guy who will prove the best parent but actually the role that peter plays is not that of a father but of a mother um

Speaker 1 daddy bears i gather do not bring up their babies Yeah, they're probably not close to their

Speaker 1 cubs are raised solely by their mothers. And so Peter comes to be nicknamed by his comrades Mummy Bear.
And I mean, you read the accounts of it and

Speaker 1 Voitec,

Speaker 1 he's a little cub. He might get frightened.
He might get scared. Whenever he does, he runs to Peter and Peter picks him up in his arms and cradles him and cuddles him, gives him his finger for

Speaker 1 Voitek to kind of suck on.

Speaker 1 It's all very sweet. But then gradually, of course, Voitek starts to grow up and

Speaker 1 he's a great laugh.

Speaker 2 Is he? Yeah. Bears are like that, though, aren't they? He loves it.

Speaker 1 So there's initially there's great fun and games with a Dalmatian that's owned by the British liaison officer.

Speaker 1 He's always climbing trees and then finding that

Speaker 1 he can't climb down. So he just drops down and falls on passing soldiers and it's all great fun.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 he's...

Speaker 2 He's,

Speaker 1 well, I'm not going to call him a perf because, of course, he's a bear, but he's very keen on stealing um the underwear of Polish female soldiers.

Speaker 1 So to quote Eileen Orr, the women part of a Polish signals unit were furious because after months of living rough in their isolated camp in the dusty desert they had only recently taken a rare trip to Tel Aviv to acquire the much cherished underwear and Peter has to go and get it back get

Speaker 2 what's he doing with it.

Speaker 2 What interest does he have trying it afterwards? Yeah, who knows? I don't know.

Speaker 1 The thing he really loves is swimming and this is obviously a problem you know if you're in a kind of dusty parched land in in palestine so whenever he he finds water whenever he finds a kind of river or a pond or mud or whatever he'll kind of roll in it and the larger he gets the more his use of water has to be rationed because of course it's a very precious commodity and so he's always trying to sneak into the shower hut this is another example of his mischievous nature right um and on one occasion he does this and he finds that there's an arab spy in the corner.

Speaker 2 So he's cornered.

Speaker 1 So his reward for this is he gets an extra long shower plus lots of fruit and beer.

Speaker 2 And beer. So he's tanked up half the time.

Speaker 1 So he loves beer and he loves cigarettes and he loves coffee. The cigarettes have to be lit, but he won't smoke them.
He eats them. But I think the reason for this is that...

Speaker 1 At no point does it cross Voitek's mind that he's a bear.

Speaker 1 He assumes that he is a Polish soldier. I mean, he has no reason to think otherwise.
He's been brought up by them, he lives among them, he adopts their habits, and he marches with them.

Speaker 1 He kind of learns to kind of salute. I mean, he does this without being instructed.
He just kind of picks up on it.

Speaker 2 Right, everyone else is doing it. You do it, right? You do it.

Speaker 1 And so you can see why he would become a massive, massive favorite.

Speaker 1 Not just with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, as the 2nd Transport Company has now become, but with the whole of Anders Army, the whole of the second Polish Corps, obviously really, really good for their morale.

Speaker 1 You can completely see why officers are going, yeah, let's keep this bear. It's good.

Speaker 2 Well, maybe not if your underwear has been stolen, he's trying to get into the shower with you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe not. But I think, in general, very good for morale.
But then in December 1943, there is a crisis because Wojtek and his company are moved to Egypt, to Alexandria.

Speaker 1 And the reason for that is that by this point, Rommel is, you know, he's gone. And the British have invaded Sicily and going up Italy and they need the Poles to help them in this terrible war.

Speaker 1 And the crisis is that soldiers are forbidden to transport pets or mascots. There is no room in the transport ship for such animals.

Speaker 1 So their solution to this is to draft Wojtek officially into the Polish army as a private. And the British authorities approve this.
They, you know, they signed Wojtek's military papers.

Speaker 1 He is now enrolled as a Polish soldier officially. And on the 13th of February, 1944, Voitek and his comrades, they're in Alexandria.

Speaker 1 They board a troop ship and they set sail westwards across the Mediterranean. And their destination, Dominic, is Taranto.

Speaker 2 And from there, Monte Cassino. Crikey, what a cliffhanger.
So let's take a break and we will return with Voitek's heroism of the battle for Monte Cassino.

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Speaker 2 General Oliver Lees had earmarked the Poles for the key role of capturing the Monte Cassino Massif.

Speaker 2 He had sensed a fire and a pride in the bellies of the Poles that suggested they might be more willing to take on this toughest of nuts than other units in 8th Army.

Speaker 2 Visiting General Władysław Anders, the Polish Corps commander on the 24th of March, Lies coated his proposal in very clear terms, that what he was offering would be immeasurably challenging, but was also a singular honour and indicative of the respect he had for the general and his men.

Speaker 2 Anders was well aware that the Abbey had not been taken in two months of bitter fighting, and that it had eluded the efforts of battle-hardened and highly experienced troops.

Speaker 2 I realise that the cost in lives must be heavy, he later wrote. But I realize, too, the importance of the capture of Monte Cassino to the Allied cause, and most of all, to that of Poland.

Speaker 2 So that was the immortal prose of James Holland, brother of the lesser-known Holland podcasting star. And that's from James's book, Casino 44, Five Months of Hell in Italy.

Speaker 2 And that reminds us, actually, Monte Cassino is not just any battle of the Second World War.

Speaker 2 It is regarded as one of the most difficult because it's the hinge of a German defensive line called the Gustav Line and the Allies have to break it to get to Rome.

Speaker 2 And on the summit of Monte Cassino is this monastery that was founded by Saint Benedict Tom.

Speaker 1 Yes, so one of the most celebrated monasteries in the whole of Latin Christendom founded in AD 529.

Speaker 1 It had been rebuilt and rebuilt, kind of had this glorious heyday in the 11th and 12th centuries 14th century there'd been an earthquake it had been rebuilt again so it's a great emblem of the the kind of the the ability of the catholic church to rise above all the disasters that could be thrown at it and now it is in the eye of this terrible storm because the allies have to knock it out essentially because the germans have occupied it and the allies feel that they have to destroy the german positions if they're going to have a hope of breaking through and getting getting on to Rome.

Speaker 1 And we actually spoke to my brother in an earlier episode about the build-up to the Battle of Monte Cassino. But Voitek arrives right in the middle of it as it's kind of reaching this terrible climax.

Speaker 1 And as you said in my brother's reading, Anders and his army are given the opportunity to storm Monte Cassino, to capture it.

Speaker 1 And, you know, this is a mark of great honor because, as my brother says, it's the toughest of nuts.

Speaker 1 And there have previously been three attempts to take the monastery. It's failed.

Speaker 1 The monastery itself has been bombed completely into rubble, which actually means that it's now harder to take because there are more places to kind of hide. Three offensives have failed.

Speaker 1 The Poles will now take part in the fourth offensive, Operation Diadem, and in fact will kind of spearhead it.

Speaker 1 So the task for the Poles is to capture a mountain that has defied all the previous Allied troops. So, you know, they've smashed themselves against it and broken against it.
So can the Poles do it?

Speaker 1 So 24th of April 1944, they start moving up the foothills to take up positions for the final assault.

Speaker 1 And it is the job of Voitek's company to keep the Polish artillery supplied with shells, with ammunition, as the Poles make their advance towards Monte Cassino. So inching forwards.

Speaker 1 And they do this for three weeks and it's exceedingly perilous and dangerous job so they are having to drive at night to avoid you know enemy artillery kind of sheer hairpin bends people always kind of driving off cliffs and things like that so to quote a Polish veteran who's cited by Elena in her book when we finally pulled into the positions of our artillery we unloaded the ammo and fuses and after a short rest turned around and got out as fast as possible in spite of all our precautions a number of trucks crashed into the steep gorges killing killing their drivers.

Speaker 1 So it's a very perilous business.

Speaker 2 I mean, this must be absolutely terrifying, traumatizing for Voitec. I mean, he's just been having larks in the desert,

Speaker 2 showers and stuff. Yeah.
So this is cigarettes. Yeah.
So what does he make of all this?

Speaker 1 Well, he's terrified and he stays in the lorries kind of whimpering, covering his eyes with his paws, you know, completely shell-shocked.

Speaker 1 But then he starts to get his kind of mojo back and he climbs out of the lorry that he's been hiding in and he kind of looks around and wanders over to a tree and he climbs up the tree and he kind of watches the action.

Speaker 1 So he's down seeing his friends carting, you know, shells up to the guns and carrying crates and things. So he drops down from the tree and he

Speaker 1 walks over to his fellow soldiers and he holds out his paws to indicate that you know he'd quite like to join in the fun.

Speaker 1 He doesn't really know what it's about, but it's you know his friends are doing it so why wouldn't he wanted to join in?

Speaker 1 He's never, of course, been trained

Speaker 1 to handle heavy boxes of munitions, but he's a bear. So he's very strong.
And so actually he turns out to be absolutely brilliant. And

Speaker 1 he does this with all his mates. And the boast is that he never drops a single shell.
And he does it.

Speaker 1 kind of for as long as he wants to and then if he gets bored he'll go off and maybe have a you know have a have a sleep or something or uh have have a have a bit of a doze um and if they want to get him back on they give him a lit cigarette or bar of chocolate or something and then he'll join back in and he puts in really really sterling work and he contributes to uh the softening up of the german defenses that enable anders army on the 11th of may to begin the long-awaited fourth offensive and it's an absolutely murderous battle it lasts you know days and days and days so just to give a description again from my brother's book this is just one passage.

Speaker 1 On one occasion, a Polish lieutenant had been standing behind three men. A shell came over and exploded right on top of them.
And he commented, two of the men disappeared into thin air.

Speaker 1 There was nothing left. But on a bush nearby, I saw the ammunition belt and the stomach of the third.
That was all that was left.

Speaker 1 Soon after, he spotted a soldier sitting down close by, simply staring into space. The man was covered in dust and had a glazed expression on his face.

Speaker 1 The lieutenant bent over and touched his back and saw that it was covered in blood. The man he realized was dead.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, this is a pretty serious business. And amazingly, I guess partly because he's at the back, right? Because he's helping to load the guns.
He's not in the forefront of the action.

Speaker 2 But he doesn't get hit at all.

Speaker 2 Am I right?

Speaker 1 No, he doesn't get hit. So he carries on throughout this.

Speaker 1 I think, I mean, obviously, if he'd been in the forefront of the battle, it would have been rather different because that is, I mean, really brutal.

Speaker 1 And on the 17th of May, at last, Anders leads the Poles in a second attack on Monte Cassino. The Germans withdraw.

Speaker 1 18th of May the Poles see a white flag flying over the ruins of the monastery and they're so shattered by what they've been going through that it takes some time to find enough men who are strong enough to go up to the height to take possession of the rubble of the monastery but they get there and they raise the Polish flag over the scene of desolation and a bugler plays St.

Speaker 1 Mary's trumpet call. which according to legend had first been played on the walls of Krakow to warn of the Mongols.

Speaker 1 And so it's hard not to think of all the emotions that must have been felt in Polish breasts at hearing that and thinking of the fate of their own country looking around at the rubble of this ancient dynasty.

Speaker 2 How this is not a Hollywood film, I do not know.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know how. I mean, Voitec would be an amazing subject.

Speaker 2 Of course, to a CGI bear. Or I'd do it in a bear suit.

Speaker 1 Well, it's good to... Paddington.
I mean, you do have a kind of track.

Speaker 2 I missed out on Paddington, but I think Wojtek, I was born to play that part.

Speaker 1 so the poles have lost a lot of men second polish corps have lost uh 1150 killed 3050 have been wounded the 22nd artillery supply company so that's the company that voitec's been serving with you know they have suffered casualties uh so you know voitec undoubtedly has been you know he's he's been in the line of fire

Speaker 1 but they have done heroic work.

Speaker 1 So to quote or during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Voitec's company supplied approximately 17,300 tons of ammunition, 1,200 tons of fuel, and 1,100 tons of food for Polish and British troops.

Speaker 2 Oh, good on them. And he gets a badge or something.
There's a... So they all get the badge? They all get the badge.

Speaker 1 So it's a badge featuring Voitek carrying an artillery shell. And he's got, you know, it looks as if he's marching off to go to battle.
And this becomes the badge of the 22nd Company.

Speaker 1 It's kind of one of the most sort-off pieces of military memorabilia that you could possibly have. And it becomes the kind of the, I guess, the emblem of the 22nd Company.
And

Speaker 1 it gets copied and copied. And it kind of obviously serves to broadcast Voitec's fame far beyond the limits of his own company.

Speaker 1 And if Voitek is promoted to corporal, this is the moment where it happens. I mean, it's contested.
I think the military records have been lost.

Speaker 1 So we will say he gets promoted to corporal at this point.

Speaker 2 But this isn't the end of the the fighting, right? I mean, for Wojtek, because, or the 22nd Company, because they're still battling their way through Italy.

Speaker 2 Well, they end up fighting right up to the end of the war till April 1945. And Wojtek is always in the thick of it, isn't he?

Speaker 1 The war goes right the way on till Bologna, which is the last town that the Poles capture. And as you say, Wojtek is with them throughout this whole campaign.

Speaker 1 And he does, you know, he does have kind of brushes with danger, but these tend not to be from German bullets. So he

Speaker 1 finds a pack horse and he thinks this is great fun. So he stalks the pack horse and corners it, and the pack horse lashes out and kicks him in the face with its hooves.
And this does him some damage.

Speaker 1 And maybe the time he comes closest to death is where he wanders into a base that's been set up by Indian soldiers serving with the British Army.

Speaker 1 And he wanders into a tent and curls up with a Sikh soldier who wakes up and discovers this huge bear lying next to him. And he's so alarmed that he reaches for the gun

Speaker 1 and realises that it's a tame bear, a pet bear, in time not to kill him. So the war ends.

Speaker 1 And this is a great time for the 22nd Company because they're stationed on the Adriatic. Very nice.
The war is over. It's summer.
There's a beach. So they all go down to the beach.

Speaker 1 Voitek again, I'm afraid, disgraces himself with girls. So

Speaker 1 he has this trick where he swims underwater towards a group of unsuspecting women. And then he'll suddenly surface in the midst of them and there's lots of kind of screaming and splashing.

Speaker 1 And Wojtek thinks this is absolutely hilarious.

Speaker 1 And of course, for the Polish soldiers who then have to come over and explain to the Italian women who this bear is, you know, it's a great way of meeting girls.

Speaker 2 Let me introduce you to my bear. Yes.

Speaker 1 He's a babe magnet, I think. Yeah, might be one way to describe him.
So he's having a lovely time. His fellow soldiers are having a lovely time.
It all looks great.

Speaker 1 But then, of course the shadow of stalin falls over their prospects again because we are now into the you know the onset of the cold war

Speaker 1 and stalin does not want seasoned soldiers who have fought with the british going back to poland and he doesn't even want them on the continent of europe and

Speaker 1 this is expressed to the British government and the British government say okay well we will you know we'll we'll we'll take them back to Britain.

Speaker 1 So they go back to Britain and specifically they go back to Scotland. And in September 1946, the 22nd Company arrive on the Clydeside.
They march through the streets of Glasgow.

Speaker 1 They're cheered as heroes and among their ranks is Wojtek. And these soldiers...
are now the responsibility of the British government. And the reason for this is

Speaker 1 that they're very conscious of the debt they owe the Poles. And again, I think it's this thing that has been shadowing British attitudes throughout the war, which is a feeling of guilt.

Speaker 1 And for the British government in particular, this guilt is, of course, compounded by the fact that Churchill has signed Poland over to Stalin at the Yalta conference.

Speaker 1 So there's been, you know, yet another British betrayal. of Poland.

Speaker 1 And to quote Neil Asherson on how the British government feel about this, they hoped to soothe their consciences by handling the problem of the Polish armed forces in a generous and humane way.

Speaker 1 An interim Treasury Committee for Polish Questions was set up immediately after the London government was derecognised. So that's the Polish government that had been in London throughout the war.

Speaker 1 The British government has recognised the kind of the puppet government that Stalin has set up in Warsaw in their place.

Speaker 1 So to continue quoting Ashton, in effect, this meant that Britain, although exhausted and bankrupt at the end of nearly six years of war, was taking on the duty to pay and maintain and house the Polish armed forces in the West.

Speaker 2 It's actually a terrible story, this. It's just as bad a betrayal as

Speaker 2 what happened just before the war, because the British completely pulled the rug out from under the Polish government in exile. I guess they would say it's rail polity.
We have no choice.

Speaker 2 And with the Polish army, they basically wanted to get rid of them, didn't they? They really hoped that they would all just go back.

Speaker 1 The problem is, is that Stalin will not take back people from these, you know, these Polish brigades unless they actively volunteer to go back so in other words they have to be communist sympathizers yeah to do it and in the event I think only seven officers go back something like 14,000 privates opt to head back

Speaker 1 there are a few of these from the 22nd division and they want to take voitec with them and there's a massive row about this but the vast majority of soldiers from the 22nd division opt to stay in scotland and they get to keep voitec right the commanding officer says you cannot take him and instead where do they go they go to winfield Winfield Camp, which is the case

Speaker 1 above the Tweed, just down from Berwick. And initially, there is some hostility from the locals.
You know, they're all suffering from rationing and things.

Speaker 1 But there are two things that help, I think, to thaw the relations. And the first is, again, this sense of how much people in Britain owe the Poles.

Speaker 1 And the second is that the 22nd Division have this bear.

Speaker 1 And Wojtek is the kind of perfect perfect ambassador because he remains as amiable and as full of fun as ever he's still got pyroto with him you know so kind of mummy bear he's got all his mates yeah and i think it just it never crosses his mind that he's not one of them he's a in his own mind he's a pole not a bear absolutely and so

Speaker 1 they take him to to dances

Speaker 1 And when he goes there, Voitec gives the local children rides on his back. He amuses them by doing huge farts.
They all find this hilarious. Again, kind of breaks ice with the local girls.
Right.

Speaker 1 Voitek is taken swimming in the Tweed. So he's brought down from the camp and he's led on a chain because they can't risk him being kind of swept out into the North Sea.

Speaker 1 And he goes swimming beneath the Union Bridge, which is this wonderful... bridge built in 1822.
It's the oldest functioning suspension bridge anywhere in the world.

Speaker 1 And Voitek has a wonderful swim beneath it.

Speaker 1 And I've actually been to see the camp, the site of the camp where Voitek stayed. And there's a big pool there.
And you know how much Voitec likes pools.

Speaker 1 And all around it are trees and they're still marked with his claw marks. No, really?

Speaker 1 And I just want to give a shout out to Livy, who I know will be listening to this, who took us up there and showed us where the trees were. The paw marks of Voitek.
on the living tree.

Speaker 1 It's a kind of wonderful thing. And it's so odd.
This is a story, as I said, begins with all this darkness and and horror that you were describing on Monday.

Speaker 1 And yet there is a link that takes us to a tree above the Tweed that is marked with the claw marks

Speaker 2 of a bear. And the people love him, do they? They're delighted.
They think he's a tremendous person. They do.

Speaker 1 And the measure of this is, of course, that, you know, there's very strict rationing at this point. And Wojtek is a bear with a huge appetite.

Speaker 1 And it's not just the Poles, it's all the locals kind of, they, you know, they get together and they make sure that he has enough food.

Speaker 1 And maybe it helps that on the far bank, so on the English bank, opposite the Scottish side of the Tweed, there is a honey farm in the village of Horncliffe, which is excellent.

Speaker 1 And again, a shout out to them. So brilliant.

Speaker 2 So they're able to keep Voitech in there. You genuinely could not make that up.

Speaker 1 But then, then, Dominic, I mean, you know, this is heartwarming story, but then tragedy.

Speaker 2 Oh, no.

Speaker 1 Because in 1947,

Speaker 1 the 22nd Division start to be demobbed. So they found settlement across Britain.
The camp is going to be closed down. The men leave for civilian life.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the question is,

Speaker 1 what is going to happen to Voitec?

Speaker 2 He can't get a job, can he?

Speaker 1 He can't get a job. You know, he can't be reunited with his loved ones because his mother's dead.
You know,

Speaker 1 real problem. So it's decided that he will be taken.
to Edinburgh Zoo.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 1 And on the 15th of November 1947, you know,

Speaker 1 he's loaded into a cage. The cage is put on the back of a truck and he's driven off to Edinburgh.

Speaker 2 Wow, that is quite sad.

Speaker 1 And everyone who watches him go in 22nd Division is devastated, none more so than Peter.

Speaker 1 And from this point on, it is said that if anyone ever mentioned Voitek's name to him, he would burst into tears. And his comrades as well are devastated.

Speaker 1 They are

Speaker 1 repeatedly making trips to the zoo.

Speaker 2 And I suppose, Tommy, if you were trying to sort of give this story a bit of profundity, not that it needs it, you might say

Speaker 2 there's a kind of, this is Poland's story in microcosm. People have lost touch with their families.
Every family in Poland has been scarred by grief and loss and trauma.

Speaker 2 And in a way, Piotr, having lost touch with their family.

Speaker 1 He's lost his family and now he's losing Wojtek.

Speaker 2 Yeah, is part of a bigger story.

Speaker 1 And that is why, genuinely, the Polish soldiers who've been his comrades are always visiting him. And sometimes they'll break into his enclosure and wrestle with him, like in the good old days.

Speaker 1 And when they leave, Voitek tries to clamber out through the bars. And it's not just the Poles who feel the tragedy of this.

Speaker 1 I mean, so the director of Edinburgh Zoo, who's a guy called Thomas Gillespie, I mean, he wrote, I never felt so sorry to see an animal that had enjoyed so much freedom and fun confined to a cage.

Speaker 1 There are shards of light in this story. So one is that Peter, who had lost his family, he is reunited with most of them.

Speaker 1 His two oldest sons are lost for good, but the rest of his family, they do come and join him in London. Right.

Speaker 1 And Voitek also, it's not total misery because I'm very happy to say that he becomes obsessed by penguins so he he he takes a huge interest in them and whenever they kind of march past he'll watch them with huge fascination and also of course Poles continue to visit him and it's not just his it's not just his former comrades because by now Voitek has become an emblem for Poles in Britain of everything that they've been through and so they will come and watch and talk to him and he always perks up and this is a story that starts to get resonance in Britain as well, particularly I think in Scotland, in the Borders region and in Edinburgh, to the extent that ultimately Voitek is always appearing on Blue Peter.

Speaker 2 The children's TV programme.

Speaker 1 The children's TV programme. So he's a kind of a regular star.
Yeah. But towards the end of his life, so going into the 60s, he does start to become very depressed.
He goes into a steep decline.

Speaker 1 And on the 15th of November, 1963, so he's, by which point he's been in the zoo for 16 years, he's put down.

Speaker 2 Oh, poor Voitek. Poor Voitec.
It's a bit of a sweet story, I suppose, isn't it, Tom?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 he is a worthy hero

Speaker 1 for an episode of our podcast.

Speaker 2 He definitely is.

Speaker 1 And I think it, for a number of reasons. So we've talked about how

Speaker 1 this is a story that spans a vast range of places. So it begins in Poland.
It takes us to Siberia, to the Middle East, to Italy, to the woods above my Scottish estate.

Speaker 2 It reminds you just how much of a world war the Second World War was.

Speaker 1 I think also Wojtek is a very moving symbol of Polish-Scottish friendship. So I know that he is hugely famous in Poland, but he's pretty well known on the borders as well.

Speaker 1 Schoolchildren there know all about him. There's a statue of him in Duns, which is, you know,

Speaker 1 just up from the Tweed. And there's a statue in Edinburgh commemorating his presence there.

Speaker 2 Quite right, too.

Speaker 1 But I think above all, and the reason why it's good to have this as a coder to

Speaker 1 the terrible story that we've been telling in our previous three episodes,

Speaker 1 is that Wojtek's career does kind of rub up against the horrors that overwhelmed Poland in the war. But because he was wholly innocent of them, knew nothing of them,

Speaker 1 he somehow seemed to provide

Speaker 1 the Poles who were with him

Speaker 1 with a way of kind of staring into the abyss of their own grief and everything that they'd lost, their bereavement,

Speaker 1 in a way that was kind of less painful than staring into that heart of darkness directly.

Speaker 2 I think.

Speaker 1 That makes sense.

Speaker 1 I mean, again, I don't want to kind of put words into the Polish soldiers who went through all that, but that's the the sense that I get from reading about the obviously very profound bond that they felt with this kind of, this, this innocent animal.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that makes, I mean, they've lost everything.

Speaker 2 They've lost their families, they've lost their homeland, and they can pour a lot of that emotion into their relationship with this, with this, as you said, this innocent bear.

Speaker 1 And that is surely why,

Speaker 1 you know, these bereaved, homesick, grieving men had adopted him in the first place. It's why

Speaker 1 the Polish officer said, yes, let's keep him. It's why the British High Command recognised this and said, yes, we will, you know, enroll him as a private.
And it's why they invested such love in him.

Speaker 1 And I think it's why to this day in Poland, Wojtek does remain kind of very loved.

Speaker 2 Well, Tom, that was amazing. A brilliant story.
Very moving story, actually. I didn't expect it to be such a moving story.

Speaker 1 I find it a really moving story.

Speaker 2 And it was the perfect coder to the grim story of

Speaker 2 the fall of Poland in in 1939 so that's the story of vojtech the bear if you're polish of course there are loads of children's books you can look that up in and a shout out to the most amazing book on uh poland's experience in the second world war which we talked about a lot which is halek kochans' book the eagle unbowed

Speaker 2 but next week we will be back with something completely different because i've heard a rumor that the previous translations of Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars have been superseded.

Speaker 2 Is that correct, Tom? Am I writing

Speaker 2 to say, Dominic? That a new translation by an unknown author of Suetonius's 12 Caesars is about to hit the bookshelves. And to celebrate this, the author himself on his podcast will be taking us into

Speaker 2 a series on the sex secrets of the Caesars. And we'll be looking not just at Suetonius's 12 Caesars itself, but also at the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius.

Speaker 2 So, a complete change of tone, and I suspect a slightly more lubricious style of podcasting next week when we return with the Romans. So, on that bombshell, Tom, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 That was absolutely wonderful. And we'll see you all next time.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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