wojtek (you say voytek) - the soldier bear

I'm upset guys.

I'm also really happy! Happy to finally learn of a certain Syrian Brown Bear that pulled his fucking weight (they're usually lazy, picnic trashing hooligans). But upset that it isn't a more well-known story, as it happened some 60 years ago. Wojtek was an abandoned bear cub, discovered by a local boy in Hamadan, Persia (present day Iran) in 1942. He was sold to a group of Polish soldiers stationed nearby in exchange for some meat tins. Please don't me ask what kind of meat because I don't know. But safe to say the kid got a shitty deal.


The rest of the story goes basically like this. Polish soldiers trained Wojtek, feeding him a diet of fruits and more imporantly, beer and cigarettes. He soon became the unofficial mascot of all polish units in the area where he was stationed. Like any smart military would, they drafted him into the Polish Army, listing Wojtek as a soldier of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps. Amazing idea. Imagine the public relations nightmare for the Nazi's commanders trying to spin to their men why the Poles had a fighting Brown bear. During the Battle of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy, Wojtek "the badass" aided his fellow comrades by carrying crates of ammunition to them, never dropping a single crate or shell. Disney movie anyone? Or at least a Saturday morning cartoon. Screw it. There's only two things I need to say. One, is that the following picture will be going up on my wall:


And two, the last time I heard about an animal this cool, it was a dolphin named "Jones" in a fictional movie entitled, JOHNNY MNEUMONIC (post to come later with my extremely well formulated thoughts on this soon to be relevant again picture, directed by Robert Longo who eerily enough never directed any feature film before or after).

A short historical video on Voytek.



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