The ship advanced between the waves with a metallic roar when a British soldier, leaning on the railing, saw something that made him flash incredulously. Among the men of the 22nd Polish Artillery Supply Companya huge bear He walked with the same naturalness as them, as if it were the most normal in the world.
It was not a deception of the view or a joke of the allied soldiers: that bear had name, range and service number. It was called Wojtekhe was a satin soldier of the Polish army and was about to enter combat.
That unconventional recruit had started his trip away from the battlefield, in the mountains of Iran. Orphan after the your mother’s hunthe ended up in the hands of a Kurdish boy who carried him in a sack, not knowing that he would soon be part of an incredible story.
Milk, beer and wrestling: the life of barracks
The Poles soldiersthat crossed the region after their release from the Soviet fields, they saw it and something in the little Osezno touched the fiber. In exchange for food and a Swiss knife with built -in penthe boy agreed to give it to him. In his new family, Wojtek received milk in a bottle of vodka and fruits as part of his diet, growing between uniforms and weapons.
As the Polish convoy advanced towards PalestineWojtek not only strengthened, but I learned the customs of the soldiers. He walked on two legs, played wrestling with them and shared beer provisions. “It was like a puppy,” he remembered Wojciech Narebski, officer in command, to the BBC. “They gave him milk from a bottle as if he were a baby, so he felt those soldiers like his parents, he trusted them and was very friendly,” he said. His presence raised the moral of a troop formed by men who had lost everything, and who, in some way, saw in him a reflection of their own history.
But the barracks’s life was not always calm. Wojtek earned enemies among the British units when sneaking into the showers, in search of a breath of suffocating heat, and by looting beer reserves, generating more than one disgust among the allies.
However, his fate changed the day he scared, unintentionally, to a spy that had infiltrated the camp. As a reward, he received a ration of his beer and unlimited permission to use the showers, an unthinkable privilege for any human soldier.
The day Wojtek became a war hero
Wojtek’s true baptism came in 1944, in the brutal Battle of Monteassino. The Nazi defensive line blocked the allied advance towards Rome, and the artillery played a key role in the offensive. Wojtek, always observer, noticed that his companions They transported ammunition boxes and decided to imitate them.
The military of both sides could not believe what they were seeing: while numerous men fell, that unusual gunner crossed the battlefield loading projectiles as if it were the most natural in the world. “I’m sure he kept us standing,” said the father of Sue Butlerone of the Polish soldiers who witnessed the scene.
Decades later, his daughter told the story to the BBCexplaining how the impact of its feat was sealed forever: the Badge of the 22nd company was redesigned with the image of a bear transporting a projectile.
The sad last days of the soldier bear
When the war ended, Wojtek’s fate was in the air. His companions refused to give him to the Polish communist authorities, and finally He was transferred to Scotland along with the rest of the unit.
In a parade in Glasgow, he was received as a War herobut when the 22nd company dissolved, he had to say goodbye to his life as a soldier. His new home was the Edinburgh Zoowhere he spent his last years.
Despite being far from the affection of the camp, Wojtek never forgot his past. Their former companions visited him frequentlytaking beer and cigarettes, which continued swallowing instead of smoking them.
As soon as he listened to someone Polish, he joined immediately, as if he expected to receive a new order. However, over time, those who knew him noticed that Something in him had turned off. After a youth full of action, the monotony of the zoo seemed to have stolen the desire to live.
Wojtek He died in 1963but his story was recorded in the memory of those who met him. In Edinburgh, one statue in his honor It shows it next to a Polish soldier, a testimony of that bear who, without proposing it, became a symbol of struggle, loyalty and companionship. As Wojciech Narebski said at the inauguration of the monument: “Wojtek could not return to Poland, but will remain on Polish land.”
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