#fighting bear

Last year it was 50 years since the death of Polish Army Bear, Wojtek.

The soldiers got him as a small cub from a shepherd boy in Persian mountains after his mother was killed by hunters in 1942.

They nursed him on condensed milk and he was adopted by the 22nd Transport Company, Artillery Division. He was basically a mascot, a way to uphold morale of the soldiers.

He grew up not to be dangerous to his people and he didn't make much noise. But his people were his. When a guy broke into the ammo storage where Wojtek slept, he sure got a surprise.

The soldiers playfighted with the bear and he liked to hang around the kitchen, where he ate basically anything.

He developed a taste for wine and beer and cigarettes too. Those he only accepted if they were lit. It is said he usually took a puff and then swallowed the cig.

When the unit was preparing to move to Italy, they could not take an animal to the fight. But they had to take all the soldiers, right? So Wojtek got his own paybook, rank and serial number.

He was usually chained to a truck and when he got bored, he moved the boxes with grenades, as he'd seen the soldiers do. When Henryk, one of the guys who took care of him, was called to the front line as a spotter, Wojtek got curious, grabbed a case of ammo and went to have a look where Henryk went. And so he helped and became an emblem of the unit.

After the end of the WWII in 1945, the Polish soldiers were sent to Britain where they were demobilized. Wojtek stayed at the Edinburgh Zoo where the veterans visited him and eventually died in 1963.