Animals In The Military A light breeze is blowing through the dark brown hair of a young lieutenant. He makes his way through the rough Iranian wilderness and spies a city, Hamadan. The year is 1942, and the Anders army, accompanied by thousands of polish civilians escaping the gulags, have stopped to rest. While there, lieutenant Anatol Tarnowiecki encounters an Iranian boy with a newly orphaned bear cub. Taken by the bear, Tarnowiecki, decides to buy him. Trading chocolates and others items the lieutenant purchases the bear. This is the story of Corporal Wojtek, a bear and loyal polish soldier. At first the men attempted to hide the cub from high ranking officers in hopes to keep Wojtek, but one by one they found out about the bear. Seeing the value in keeping the …show more content…
Wojtek was known to wrestle with men for fun and indulge in a drink or two. He even began smoking cigarettes, or rather eating lit cigarettes. Being a wild animal Wojtek would occasionally get himself into trouble. He would break into the storehouse and eat whatever he could get his hands on. He was even known to break into the showers and turn them on. This resulted in a few water shortages, but it would eventually work in the soldiers favor one night when Wojtek found a spy in the showers. Once the company was driving along an Italian shore when Wojtek jumped onto the beach and began running towards a group of girls. The polish soldiers assured the girls they were safe and retrieved their companion. Wojtek despite being a generally lazy bear even helped in battle during the battle of Monte Cassino in 1944. He had never been trained to do so but the bear observed his fellow soldiers transporting ammunition and jumped in to help. Although it was reported he would often carry the empty boxes instead of the full ones. Wojtek accompanied the army for over two years until the war ended in 1945. He would go on to live a long happy life, dying at the age of 21 in 1963, due to