Wojtek the Bear: The Polish Soldier Who Helped Win WWII

Most of us know that initially Hitler and Stalin were really good friends, they had an agreement and everything (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact), a real dynamic duo. When Germany and Russia invaded Poland in 1939, they sent Polish soldiers to exile in gulags in Siberia. Everything changed in 1940 when the German Wehrmacht attacked the Soviet Union (who could have guessed the Nazis would betray someone…).

The Soviet Union quickly switched to the Allied side and began sending Russian soldiers as reinforcements to almost all fronts in Europe.

The Brilliant Russian Idea

Then the Russians had a brilliant idea: “What if,” said some Russian general, “we take all the prisoners of war sitting in the gulag and force them to fight the Nazis?”

So that’s what they sent to the British: prisoners who had been tortured and lived for years in concentration camps in the middle of Siberia were sent to Iraq to join the British and position themselves in Egypt and southern Israel (then Palestine) awaiting further orders.

The Polish prisoners would later be known as the Polish II Corps. And they would lead to victory in one of the most brutal battles the war knew: the Battle of Monte Cassino. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Enter Wojtek

Something interesting happened on the way to Iraq: On April 8, 1942, a contingent of Polish soldiers met a local boy in Hamadan, Iran. The boy had found a bear cub in the forest; its mother had been killed by hunters, and the boy had adopted it. The boy and cub were on the verge of collapse from hunger, and the soldiers, who themselves had lost their families and were tired and hungry, took pity on him and made a deal.

They bought the cub from him for a few Persian coins, a chocolate bar, a penknife, and a can of corned beef.

Raising a Soldier

Initially, they hid the cub from their commanders and fed it condensed milk from a used vodka bottle and an improvised pacifier made from a rag. But it’s a bit hard to prevent attention from a Syrian brown bear that can reach a height of 1.85 meters and weigh 200 kg, and the officers eventually noticed its existence but allowed it to stay as the corps’ mascot.

A young soldier named Peter Prendys was assigned as the bear’s keeper and somehow managed to teach it to salute other soldiers.

The bear was called Wojtek, a common name in Poland meaning “the smiling warrior.” Wojtek, it turns out, had a talent for learning soldiers’ habits: he drank beer (one bottle at a time), smoked (one puff and then he would eat the cigarette), stole underwear from women’s quarters (this is a rumor; apparently Wojtek was innocent), and on Christmas Eve, the soldiers discovered that Wojtek had broken into the food storage and devoured all the sweet things they had prepared for the festive meal.

The Hero Bear

Despite this, in 1943 Wojtek proved himself: The corps was stationed at a British base in what later became today’s Gaza Strip. Apparently, it was really hot there, so he learned he could drink and cool off in the shower waters (he even learned to turn on the shower himself, which led to water shortages several times).

One day, an anti-British spy who broke into the base decided to hide in the shower tent. Imagine his surprise when a grizzly bear entered the shower and turned on the faucet. Because of his screams of terror, they managed to catch the spy before he could escape. Wojtek was awarded two bottles of beer and unlimited shower time as a reward for his bravery.

Getting to the Real War

Then came the time to go to battle in Italy. The British didn’t want to put a bear on the ship, claiming it was a bear and not a soldier. In response, the Polish corps gave Wojtek a personal number, rank (Private), and a paybook in his name (they paid him mainly through food and snacks). When the British brought a complaint about this, the Poles responded that the bear was inspiring and made the soldiers better fighters. The bear was allowed to board.

The Battle of Monte Cassino

And here we’re back to the Battle of Monte Cassino. Monte Cassino was a monastery in Italy that sat on a mountain dominating the approach roads to Rome. The Nazis fortified themselves almost perfectly and managed to stop three attacks. On May 16, 1944, the Polish II Corps attacked.

When the bear first saw mortars falling around him, he fled and climbed a tree. But then something strange happened: the bear saw soldiers carrying ammunition boxes to the mortars that were besieging the monastery. He came down from the tree, stood on his two hind legs, and extended his front paws in front of him.

A British soldier who described the incident says he thought he had gone crazy from shell shock when he saw a giant bear carrying three boxes of shells toward the mortars and coming back for more.

On May 18, the Polish II Corps succeeded where three previous units had failed and captured Monte Cassino from the Germans. After confirmation from high command, the 22nd Artillery Company of the corps changed its symbol to a bear carrying a mortar shell. 55,000 Allied soldiers died in the Battle of Monte Cassino.

The Post-War Years

The war ended, and the Polish soldiers were in no hurry to return to Poland, which was under Soviet control. Instead, they received an offer from the British to move to Edinburgh, Scotland, and settle there. Over time, Wojtek moved to live in Edinburgh Zoo and lived there until he died in 1963 at age 21-22.

In 2015, people from Scotland and Poland raised £300,000 to purchase a bronze statue of Wojtek standing on a granite stone platform brought from Poland.

It is said that every time at the zoo, when Wojtek heard Polish or a Polish accent, the old soldier-bear would stand and salute.

This story proves that sometimes the most effective military recruitment strategy is offering unlimited beer and shower privileges to anyone willing to carry ammunition under fire.