One of his duties was to check crew manifests and speak with freshly arrived soldiers.
Brown consulted the document in his hand once again.
Sure, there was a soldier named Wojtek.
Inside was a full-grown Syrian brown bear.
This, the colonel explained, was Corporal Wojtek.
A monument to Wojtek in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.
Wojtek means happy warrior.
Wojtek grew fast and before long took to drinking beer, which became his favorite drink.
Wojtek also ate cigarettesate, not smokealthough some accounts say he did both.
After suffering so much in the Soviet internment camps, the men were eager to return home.
Instead, they were sent back to war.
Their country itself was occupied.
Many had lost their homes, their friends and family members.
To them, the cuddly bear pup was their only source of joy.
Soldiers wrestled with him, play boxing and take him on rides on the back of pickup trucks.
Wherever the regiment went, Wojtek went alongfrom Persia to Iraq and then through Syria, Palestine and Egypt.
By then, Wojtek was no longer a cub.
In April 1944, Wojtek got stuck at the port of Alexandria.
So the soldiers improvised.
They enlisted Wojtek as a regular soldier.
They gave him a rank, a service number, and even a pay book.
The trick worked and Wotjek was allowed on board.
Now officially a soldier, Wojtek was trained by his teammates to carry crates full of heavy mortar rounds.
But Private Wojtek turned out to be a lazy thing, always looking for empty boxes to carry.
Their memories of the gulags were still too strong.
Thousands of soldiers instead sought refugee in the United Kingdom.
Wojtek along with some 3,000 soldiers got sent to a camp in Hutton in Berwickshire, Scotland.
Wojtek soon became a local attraction there.
He attended village dances and children’s parties and concerts.
Wojteks care taker Piotr Pendysz feeding Wojtek cigarettes.
Sources:www.thesoldierbear.com/World War II Database/Spiegel/Chicago Tribune/Culture.pl
