NOT EVERY ELEPHANT IN BURMA WAS A WELL TRAINED ANIMAL

There were some very wild pachyderms & if you encountered them it might be a really uncongenial experience. Irritated wild jumbo routes both an allied post & a Japanese position in one nocturnal rampage.

“Having crossed the pass, they moved south towards a position covering the Letwedet Chaung (river or stream). Along with one of his subedars & a havildar Major - Indian Army NCOs—Clarke pressed ahead, moving stealthily by reconnoitre. The jungle was thick & to get the firing clearance they would need they had to settle a position near the edge of the Chang. Suddenly, they came upon a large, still-streaming pile of elephant dung & not wanting to get mixed up with wild elephants, they turned around only to find a clear tunnel through the dense jungle—obviously made by the elephants. That tunnel they realised, could prove useful.

Later that night, they brought up the guns, mules, and equipment in an atmosphere of eerie stillness, lit only by the light of the moon. At one point, Clarke stepped into the clearing just as a barking deer leaped in. For a second they looked at one another, then the deer bounded off. Mules were being unloaded, guns unhitched, when an elephant suddenly burst in amongst them, trumpeting & crashing through the vegetation. Mules panicked & galloped off, & stores & supplies went flying. ‘It was utter & complete pandemonium’ noted Clarke. ‘& quite heartbreaking after the stealthiness of our approach.’”

By daybreak, they had managed to sort themselves out, the mules had been rounded up, stores collected & stacked, & in the clear light of day the men were able to laugh about their night-time intruder. Later however, they had cause to thank that elephant. A patrol found a Japanese position on a bend in the Chang just 200 yards away, with machine guns pointing directly from bunkers & foxholes towards the Indian Gunners, but thankfully they were unmanned. All manner of equipment was scattered about, from maps to ammunition to tins of fish. The men could only draw one conclusion: that the uproar caused by the elephant & fleeing mules had forced the enemy manning the outpost to run. Clarke & his men had had a lucky escape.

We lacked a Burmese cartoon to illustrate the point. This pink elephant is from the Namibian tourist industry in Africa, but it is appropriate in that Namibian elephants in the 1970/1980s learnt to survive that country's War of Independence.