Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II

It is monsoon season in northwest Burma, where Williams works for the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation. He has taken ill, shivering with fever and barely conscious. At some point, he realizes that he is being taken across the Yu River, carried in a basket on the back of his favorite elephant, Bandoola, “the best friend Williams ever had” (4). Williams came to work for the company in 1920 with 41 other young men. Now, he is one of only 16 left: “The others were either dead, dismissed, or disillusioned” (7). Still, despite the severity of Williams’s illness, he is optimistic: he nursed Bandoola back to health after a disastrous fight with another elephant, and he trusts him completely. Bandoola, for his part, possesses keen senses—of smell, of emotion, of understanding—like most elephants, and he is aware of Williams’s dire state. As Williams sinks into unconsciousness, Bandoola trudges forward to deliver him to a hut across the river. When Williams awakes, he will have to decide whether to try to reach the station—and medical care—at the river Chindwin, 100 miles away, by land or through the rapids.

The author delves into Williams’s history, describing his first foray “into the jungle” and relaying his experiences growing up and during the First World War. His experience as a soldier during World War I is especially shattering, though Williams himself never spoke or wrote explicitly about it. As the author explains, “he had a lifelong tendency to lock away his deepest emotions, especially the painful ones” (11). Instead, he prefers to focus on what the future might hold, what opportunities might abound. Thus, after the war, he finds himself applying to work as an “elephant wallah” for the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation (14). His early years, growing up near the coast of Cornwall in England, had been marked by his love of animals, and the only positive encounter he seemed to have during the war was with the Camel Corps in North Africa. It seemed like working with animals—especially the massive and magnificent elephant—was to be his destiny.

Even though his father is unhappy with Williams’s decision, wanting him to stay and farm the family land, Williams is determined to go. Young men like Williams are in high demand: not only did “Burma, under British rule, produc[e] 75 percent of the planet’s teak,” but also “only 4 percent of Europeans who chose the life of a teak man complet[e] their full service” (16). Williams feels certain that he is up to the task.

After spending some time in the capital city of Rangoon (now Yangon), socializing with lots of available young women, Williams heads out to the teak forests on a colonial steamship, hoping that he will be able to handle the massive elephants—and feeling strongly that he will. The author concludes the chapter by discussing the “astonishing” physical stature of elephants, along with their impeccable “memory and insight,” not to mention their “understanding of death,” exceedingly rare in the animal world, and “their secret language” (22-23). She describes Bandoola, in particular, at length: apparently, he is an extraordinary animal, doing “things that no other elephant could do” (24). He is said to have possessed a fierce intelligence, a stubborn streak, and even a rakish sense of humor.

Williams has finally made his way to the station to work with the elephants. He meets his boss—taciturn, gruff, and a heavy drinker—whom he will call Willie Harding (a pseudonym) in his later memoirs. Williams observes an elephant inspection, a routine necessity when working with elephants to ensure their health and well-being. Harding inspects everything about the elephants, from their skin and trunks to their tongues and eyes. The boss shares nothing with Williams about what he is looking for or how Williams himself should engage the elephants. Once the inspection is complete, Harding simply says to Williams, “Those four on the right are yours, and God help you if you can’t look after them” (32). 

Harding continues to treat Williams with brusque disdain, educating him on the ways of the corporate administrator (drinking or women can be a chosen vice, but not both) and insisting that he learn the Burmese language. Harding tells all the workers at the station to only speak Burmese to Williams—even though he cannot yet understand or speak very much of it. Williams studies the (incomplete) maps of Burma that are given to him, ready to venture on to what will be his own camp. The journey, and the job, will not be easy: “The maps only hinted at the ruggedness of the terrain” (36). In time, Williams comes to regard Harding’s harsh treatment of him as “a kindness. If a recruit could be broken, Harding felt, it was better to uncover it in the safety of camp rather than out in the forest” (40).

Despite having virtually no training, Williams is ordered to inspect his elephants before setting out on his journey. He mimics the actions he had seen Harding execute the day before, and little by little, he begins to learn how to care for his elephants. As he leaves Harding’s camp for his own territory, he takes with him four elephants, known as travelers, who will carry the uzis (elephant handlers) and supplies. But the group is not far from camp when a commotion arises: an elephant left behind begins trumpeting and one of Williams’s animals, Chit Ma, responds by breaking away and running back to camp. She returns with her friend, Me Tway, and Williams is forced to return one of the travelers. This, he notes, is when he begins to see “how strong the bonds among the elephants were” (41). Captive elephants, denied familial bonds, nevertheless form strong attachments with other unrelated captives.

Williams records his daily adventures and observations in a journal, along with indulging his talent for painting. He notes that the lives of the uzis are quite difficult, burdened by hard work and living far away from family and friends. He also begins to observe the elephants quite closely. One tendency, in particular, strikes him: “These captive elephants, he realized, were creatures of two worlds” (45). Once freed from their baskets and burdens, the work day over, the elephants return to the wild, behaving almost immediately like the wild animals they are. He also begins to follow the elephants, tracking their behavior like a naturalist, and pays careful attention to the uzis, whose skill with the elephants seems to him astonishing and nearly “infallible” (48). When one of his elephants dies en route—likely of natural causes in her old age—Williams performs an ad hoc autopsy, so curious is he to know everything about these massive beasts.

When he finally arrives at what will be his base camp, he finds the indigenous inhabitants welcoming and accommodating. He is humbled by their deferential treatment of him and vows “never [to] take them for granted” (52). He contemplates his new life as “a nomad in the forests,” visiting each camp within his territory—“larger than an English county” (55)—to ensure that the teak is harvested and transported with efficiency. He notes the closeness of the indigenous residents of the camp and their attachment to the animals of the area. Near the end of the chapter, the author introduces Po Toke, Bandoola’s master trainer. He secretly fears what the new English administrator may do: Bandoola is not yet large or strong enough to work the heaviest logging jobs, and he worries that, if pushed too hard, Bandoola could be injured—or worse.