Every Polish soldier who made it to the UK has a tale to tell. And Magda Czajkowska, mother of our member Dr Monika Blackwell who had already recounted her dad’s remarkable tale of survival as a teenage insurgent during Powstanie Warszawskie*, told us the celebrated tale of surely the most unusual, indeed unique, Polish soldier, Wojtek the Soldier Bear. This bear has passed into myth and legend as the orphaned bear cub who became a Regimental – and Polish Forces- mascot.In 1942 he was rescued by Polish Forces, part of Gen Anders army en route from their Siberian Gulags.They bought him in Iran somewhere between Pahlevi and Teheran. He then travelled with the 22ndArtillery Supply Company, an active front line artillery company and part of 2nd Polish Corps – by now100,000 strong.
His regiment went from the Middle East to Italy. Baby bears do get bigger, and so did Wojtek. He was to reach 6 ft tall and weighed around 500lbs.To ensure rations reached him, he was enlisted as a private soldier with his own pay book. Promotion soon came his way, and he became a Corporal, though it is notre counted where, or by which brave colleague, his Service medals were pinned. He enjoyed a bottle of beer and a cigarette, which he would eat. (Please do not try this at home).
Being raised and cosseted by humans meant that he thought he, too, was a soldier.Observing the behaviour of his military companions, he was taught to lift heavy boxes of 25 pounder artillery shells (carefully) and now appears doing so, on the regimental badge.One eyewitness told me that they saw his unit driving their truck down to the beach in Italy for a swim.The soldiers stripped off and ran into the sea, followed by the huge, hairy figure of Wojtek, by now fully grown. This caused panic among the Italian bathers, who fled for safety out of the water and hid in the sand dunes.
His front line unit was not a sinecure and was regularly exposed to gunfire. Wojtek survived Monte Cassino, where so many didn’t. When the war ended, his unit travelled to Scotland, and he was stationed in Berwickshire, until he was demobbed in 1947.At this stage, he was sent to Edinburgh Zoo, where he would recognise visiting comrades in arms, who would throw him cigarettes to eat. He appeared on the BBC’s Blue Peter programme several times and died in 1963.Why was Wojtek made so welcome? Keeping a full sized brown bear at the Front does raise certain,ahem, practical difficulties. But the young men who rescued him and clearly cherished him must’ve empathised with him as a displaced fellow being, a victim of war, who, like them, had lost his home and family.RIP Wojtek – the brave Soldier Bear.Stefan Cembrowicz Photos courtesy of Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum.* Warsaw 1944 – An Insurgent’s Journal of the Uprising; Zbigniew Czajkowski (Pen and Sword publishers)
