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It's not uncommon for animals and people to live in harmony, but have you ever seen a brown bear on the battlefield carrying a mortar shell?
In 1944, during the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy, a particularly peculiar scene occurred. A bear with a height of 1.82 meters and a weight of more than 400 pounds traveled with Polish soldiers to serve as transporters on the battlefield under heavy artillery fire.
It walked upright on its feet like a human being, carrying mortar shells and constantly transporting ammunition into the hands of soldiers.
When the British army saw this huge bear, it thought it was a new type of war weapon secretly developed by the Soviet Union, and it was a little frightened.
So why did this bear appear on the battlefield, what did it have to do with the Soviet Union, and why did it follow Polish soldiers to transport ammunition?
Remnants of the war Polish soldiers encountered and bought brown bear cubs
In 1939, Hitler, who dreamed of conquering all of Europe, quickly launched a full-scale attack on Poland from the west, south and north after successfully annexing Czechoslovakia.
Although the unsuspecting Poland was defeated, it stubbornly resisted the last. However, the Soviet Union suddenly rushed in from the east. In the face of the Soviet-German attack, Poland was unable to resist and eventually perished.
Half of the Polish soldiers involved in the war were captured by the Soviets, imprisoned in prisoner-of-war camps, and subjected to inhuman torture.
After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, the soldiers on the battlefield suffered serious casualties and the front line was tight. At this time Stalin suddenly remembered the Polish soldiers in the prisoner-of-war camp, and he planned to organize them and throw them into the battlefield.
But these Polish soldiers were, after all, captured by the Soviet army, and Stalin was not at ease about incorporating them into his country's army. So he gave this group of Polish soldiers to his allies, the British.
In 1942, the Polish Army, which was assigned to the 22nd Artillery Transport Company of the 2nd Corps, was ordered to be stationed at the railway station in Hamadan, Iran, ready to wait for combat. One day, while several soldiers were squatting on the side of the road to eat, a skinny little boy carrying a sack came over.
He looked at the Polish soldiers, and the soldiers looked at him and remembered that when they had been locked up in a prisoner-of-war camp and had not enough to eat, they suddenly felt pity, and they gave part of their food to the boy.
The boy did not leave after eating, but opened the sack of sacks that the two were carrying. After the cloth bag was opened, a dazed brown bear cub poked its head out from the inside and looked around curiously.
The Polish soldiers fell in love with the humble bear cub at first sight, and when they learned from the little boy that it was a bear cub without parents, they had the idea of buying it.
The little boy knew that he could not feed the bear cubs, so he did not refuse the soldiers' request to buy the bear cubs. After discussion, the soldiers exchanged a Swiss Army knife, a box of canned beef and chocolates from the boy's hand for a bear cub.
After changing to the bear cubs, the soldiers took out the accumulated cans and various kinds of meat to feed the bear cubs. But because the cubs were too snackal to eat the meat, they had to pour condensed milk into a washed vodka bottle and feed it to the bears.
At that time, pets and animals were not allowed in the army. Therefore, the soldiers hid the bear in their tents, and several people took turns to take cover and feed the bear.
The bear eats and sleeps with the soldiers every day, and will also spoil and sell cuteness. Its existence brings a lot of fun to the boring life of the soldiers, and the longer they spend together, the more the soldiers like this little bear.
Bumped into by the chief, drank the strongest wine, and fought the fiercest fight
But the good times did not last long, and the bear that the soldiers had been carefully hiding was still discovered by the commander.
One day, the camp commander suddenly ordered an emergency assembly. Because of the short time, the soldiers guarding the bear only had time to cover the bear that was still sleeping with a quilt.
The soldiers had expected the bears to fall asleep quietly until the team disbanded. Who knows, just as the chief was talking, the bear who had slept enough crawled out of the tent and crashed into the chief's leg.
The officer looked at the little bear at his leg who was tilting his head to look at him and did not speak. The few soldiers who raised the bears were frightened and did not dare to come out, for fear that the commander would be angry.
Surprisingly, the officer was not angry, and he gave the bear a name: Wojciech, aka "Smiling Warrior."
After Walter officially appeared in front of the commander, the soldiers were relieved to release him from the tent.
The soldiers throughout the camp loved the bear so much that they scrambled to feed it every day. In this way, in the love of the soldiers, Walter grew up day by day.
Walter is very smart and has a particularly strong ability to learn and imitate. After spending a long time with the soldiers, it walked more and more steadily upright. In addition to this, it also learned to "smoke", drink alcohol, drink coffee, and take a bath.
Of course, Walter "smoking" is not really smoking like humans, but likes to chew a lit cigarette, swallow it in his stomach, and then spit out a smoke ring in his mouth.
If a soldier gives Walter an unlit cigarette, he spits it out on the ground.
Although "smoking" is not really smoking, when drinking, it likes to drink beer, but its favorite drink is still spirits - vodka.
Whenever a soldier drank, he would take his own cup and ask them for a drink. If you don't give it a drink, it turns around like a tantrumious child. Whatever you want to coax it into ignoring people, unless you give it a drink.
In addition, Walter can also accompany the soldiers to practice. At first, when it was young, it liked to help the soldiers, picking up the throws they threw during training, and when it was a little older, it liked wrestling again.
Walter's strength was so great and fierce that even if a dozen soldiers wrestled with it in a group, it would be difficult to win it. So the soldiers always made it their goal to win wrestling over Walter, and this activity later developed into one of the must-have items for recruits.
When the King of England learned that the Polish army had a brown bear with great fighting ability and intelligence, he was extremely unconvinced. He felt that the Polish soldiers were certainly not as good as their own bears, so he sent someone to take Michael, the most humane and strongest brown bear in the palace, to the camp to compete with Walter.
Walter saw Michael in front of him and was wild. It roared and pounced directly on Michael, and the two bears instantly pounced on each other.
The scene was extremely ferocious, and the soldiers watching from the side did not dare to come forward to stop it. In the end, Walter nearly broke Michael's neck.
Although Walter won the fight, he let the Polish soldiers see the wildness in him. The soldiers feared that one day Walter would lose control and tear them all to pieces.
The commander also thought of the problem, in order to avoid more contact between Walter and the soldiers. Not only did he give Walter a separate home, but he also canceled the opportunity for him to take a shower in a public bath every day.
However, Walter was a bear who loved cleanliness so much that the governor forbade him to bathe in a public bathhouse. It sneaks in to take a shower in the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping and no one is guarding.
Walter has been with everyone for so long, and naturally has feelings. Therefore, the commander turned a blind eye to it sneaking to the bath in the middle of the night, but it also saved the lives of the soldiers.
In the middle of the night, the spies were caught, awarded ranks, and rushed to war
One night, Walter was about to sneak out to take a shower as usual when he suddenly saw a figure turning things through the camp.
It directly picked up the man and threw him to the ground, roaring angrily at the night. The soldiers who heard the voice thought Walter was mad and immediately ran out of the tent in a panic.
When they came out, they saw that there was still a person under Walter's ass. After interrogation, they learned that the man Walter had captured was a spy sent by the enemy.
If Walter hadn't discovered the spy, all the soldiers in the camp might have been in danger of their lives when he relayed the information back. After this incident, the commander no longer restricted Walter's movements, because he knew that Walter would not hurt everyone.
In 1944, the Polish army received orders to rush to the front immediately to reinforce the Allied forces. Fearing that Walter would have nowhere to go after separating from them, they rushed to the front with Walter.
But just as they were about to board the ship for Italy, they were stopped. According to the regulations, the ship carrying supplies allowed soldiers to board the ship, and Walter, as an animal, was naturally not among the soldiers.
But the Polish soldiers, who had long since taken Walter as a relative, were reluctant to abandon it, so their commander decided to grant Walter the title of Second Class and join the army.
In this way, Walter followed the Polish soldiers to the battlefield. Because Walter had a hobby of picking up throws before, when he saw the soldiers loading and unloading ammunition boxes, he also followed up to "join in the fun".
The officer in charge of loading and unloading was just about to stop it when he noticed that Walter and a bear had steadily taken four boxes of ammunition from the car and placed them on the ground.
Seeing that Walter was so capable, the officer did not say anything more, and let him follow the soldiers to carry the ammunition box. Thus, this is the scene at the beginning where Walter carries a mortar shell.
In the Battle of Monte Cassino, Walter was the god of luck and protection in the hearts of soldiers. He carried the shell back and forth between the position and the base, even as the enemy shell exploded around it. It did not panic at all, still steadily delivering the shells to the hands of the soldiers.
At first, when the British soldiers first saw Walter, they were shocked, and they all thought that Walter was a new weapon of war developed by the Soviet Union.
You can imagine a huge brown bear carrying a mortar shell on a battlefield full of gunfire, standing straight in front of you. The scene was terrifying, as if it were a movie.
Even more amazing is that although Walter frequently transported shells back and forth in the artillery battles, he was basically uninjured.
Therefore, every soldier was proud to receive a shell from Walter, which they felt represented a blessing. As a result, the soldiers on the battlefield of the Allied army were stable, morale was high, and the battle was like crazy.
After the victory at the Battle of Monte Cassino, the soldiers of the 22nd Company, unwilling to let Walter live against the fire, sent it to the farm in hatton village.
When Walter arrived at the farm, he quickly blended in with the local residents, and the ball held on the farm did not land. Coupled with the fact that the local media continued to report on his heroic deeds on the front line, Walter soon became the local "big red man".
After living on the farm in Hatton Village for a long time, Walter slowly fell in love with the place and did not follow the soldiers away.
In 1963, at the age of 22, Walter died of severe sequelae left in his esophagus due to long-term chewing of tobacco.
In November 2011, Poland and Edinburgh jointly commemorated Walter. Poles at the time did not understand why their country should commemorate a bear with such a large battle.
The Consul General of Edinburgh at the time said: "Of all the deeds of Wottier, its greatest contribution was not to the war. It is more like the belief that the Polish army during World War II, like Wotie, was an adopted orphan. The Polish soldiers had no family, no country, no place to live, no memory. The appearance of Wotte brought the hearts of all polish soldiers together, and in the company of Walter, they could briefly forget the cruelty of war and bring them joy and happiness. ”
In honor of Walter, they also made a documentary based on Walter and published a comic strip. Walter's statue can still be seen in places such as the Imperial War Museum and the Canadian War Museum in London.
Wotie is a remarkable Syrian brown bear and the god of luck and protection in the hearts of Polish soldiers during World War II.