A bear of a true war story

It’s not every day that spouses happen upon obscure pieces of history that fascinate them both, but that’s exactly what happened to my wife and me. We—along with our child—traveled to the United Kingdom to celebrate my wife’s birthday, and we planned to visit ancient Roman ruins and search for the ever-elusive good British food.

As we made our way northward, we spent a couple nights in Edinburgh, Scotland where we saw a curious sight that recalled a bear of a true story. Not far from our hotel was a bronze statue of a kind-looking bear and a World War II era soldier with an inscription that read “WOJTEK In memory of the Polish men and women who fought ‘For Your Freedom and Ours.’”

Seeing a Polish memorial in Scotland does seem admittedly unusual, but I’ve seen weirder things. However, when you throw a bear into the mix, it becomes truly bizarre. The genesis of this statue stems from the story of a bear that was part frat boy, part pet and part soldier, and you can trace the seeds of its fame to Russia’s invasion of Poland.

In September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland and deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to the farthest reaches of the Russian hinterland, but when Nazi Germany decided to wage war against the Soviet Union, the Russians saw utility in the exiled Poles. As such, communist leadership decided to enlist them to fight against the Nazis.

A band of Poles subsequently made its way from a Siberian concentration camp to Alexandria, Egypt, but they stopped in the Middle East. It was in Iran that they discovered a bear cub whose mother had been killed by hunters, and the Polish soldiers quickly adopted the lovable Syrian brown bear. “Nursing the bear with a bottle of condensed milk in a vodka bottle, the soldiers treated Wojtek like a baby, perhaps because their own families had been torn apart by the war,” according to Time Magazine.

The troops raised the bear and named him Wojtek, which roughly translates to “joyous warrior.” Much like the soldiers, Wojtek liked to wrestle, kick a soccer ball and acquired an insatiable taste for beer and cigarettes, “He would accept lit cigarettes, take a puff and swallow them,” one of his Polish caretakers wrote. “He loved to drink from a beer bottle, and when it was empty, he would look through the opening to see where the rest of the beer was.”

Wojtek was great for the Poles’ morale, but the good-hearted rough-housing couldn’t continue in perpetuity. Europe was in the throes of World War II, and Wojtek’s friends were part of the 22nd Transport Company’s Artillery Division in the Polish 2nd Corps, which was eventually deployed to Europe.

This deployment created challenges for the Poles. Soldiers generally aren’t permitted to bring pets to battle fronts, let alone 500 or 600 pound bears, but they didn’t want to part from their beloved Wojtek. So they got creative. “When the Polish forces were deployed to Europe, the only way to take the bear with them was to ‘enlist’ him. So he was given a name, rank and number and took part in the Italian campaign,” the BBC reported.

Once in Europe, the Poles participated in one of the fiercest battles in Italy—the Battle of Monte Cassino—and Wojtek supported his fellow soldiers on the front lines. “In one interview, a British veteran told how taken aback he was to see the 1.82m (6ft) bear carrying shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino,” the BBC continued.

“He absolutely showed that he was scared by the explosions, but he got used to it and was carting artillery around the place in big boxes,” a daughter of one of the Polish soldiers said. Another report claims that Wojtek was carrying boxes of spent ammo, but whatever assistance he provided, it was nothing short of amazing. The bear subsequently became famous, and the Polish division changed its insignia to that of a bear carrying a massive artillery shell.

In time, the war ended, but instead of transporting Wojtek back to the East where the Soviet Union may have used him in communist propaganda, the Poles ensured that he ended up in Scotland where he lived in the Edinburgh Zoo. One of his former Polish caretakers visited him afterward, and even though he considered crying a sign of weakness, he “sobbed like a baby” upon seeing his old friend.

Wojtek sadly died in 1963, and in 2015, his statue became a permanent fixture in Edinburgh and has captured the imaginations of countless passersby, like my wife and me. If you make it to Edinburgh, you can pet the statue’s nose and see Wojtek’s cheerful smirk.