Wojtek the Bear [paperback] (15 page)

As for Peter, who was 50 years of age when the war ended, there was nothing now to hold him in Scotland. He moved to London, where he found work as a builder’s labourer. There is no record
of him ever returning to Edinburgh to see his beloved Wojtek after that. It is very unlikely that he did so; it would have been much too painful for them both.

However, there was to be a happy development for the serviceman. Peter was reunited with his family. He was joined in London by his wife, who was given permission to leave her camp in the Middle
East along with her child. It is not known among the Polish diaspora what happened to
Peter’s two eldest sons who had been left behind in Poland at the start of the
war but it is possible that one or both emigrated to Australia, because his grandsons live there.

Peter died in London in 1968. One of his friends told me: ‘I believe Peter and the other soldiers who had been close to Wojtek were broken-hearted at leaving him in the zoo. They faced a
very brutal choice – the zoo or a bullet. At the zoo gradually Wojtek became withdrawn. Two bears were added to his cage to try and give him company. However, it was human contact that he
yearned for.’

That last sentence is a sad, but accurate, epitaph for the Happy Warrior.

And that should have been the end of the story. Time passed, and I feared that even Wojtek would be forgotten. Today most of his army contemporaries are
a dwindling band of former servicemen in their 80s and 90s. Even the official custodians of Poland’s history can be forgetful. One of the earliest statues ever made of Wojtek, today housed in
the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London, is used as a doorstop. It is to be found propping open the door of a small, rather stuffy private reading room used by visiting researchers –
a salutary reminder of the fleeting nature of fame.

Yet the legend of Wojtek continues to reach down through Poland’s generations. On the afternoon of Remembrance Sunday in November 2008, a memorial service for Polish servicemen who had
fought with the Allies in World War II took place in a new garden of remembrance created for the Polish residents living in Redbraes by PC Simon Daley and officers of Leith Police, near Leith Walk,
Edinburgh. With the Polish flag fluttering in a brisk November breeze, and watched by a substantial crowd, it was a moving ceremony, some of it conducted in Polish. At its conclusion, completely
unexpectedly, children, some with their mothers and fathers, came forward to lay tiny teddy bears around a small model of Wojtek, a maquette
created by Scottish sculptor
Alan Beattie Herriot. Some of the teddies had tiny red-and-white armbands, Poland’s national colours, others carried miniature Polish flags. Watching the children lay their gifts beside the
bear was a beautiful moment, a gesture of great simplicity and purity that completely overwhelmed me. I was not alone; there were tears in the eyes of all who witnessed it. I knew then with
certainty that Wojtek was destined to be remembered and would continue to enrich peoples’ lives.

Long after they were parted, Wojtek offered his old comrades emotional release; the Polish veterans often found it well nigh impossible to talk to their own kin about the privations they had
endured during the war years, yet in relating stories about Wojtek they took the first steps towards unburdening themselves of their experiences. At that ceremony I recalled the letters I was
receiving from complete strangers who felt compelled to write. One was from a Polish woman living in London, who said: ‘I am writing to you because I read about your campaign to create a
memorial for Wojtek . . . As a child the only war stories my grandfather told me were about Wojtek the bear. I think that Wojtek really helped to keep him sane during one of the most difficult
periods of his life and he had a great deal of affection and love for him. If I can help your campaign in any way, despite being based in London, I would be very happy to do so as I feel that a
memorial to Wojtek would also be a memorial to those who loved him and the troops who served with him, including my late grandfather.’

It was one of many letters of support for my quest to raise a statue in Scotland to his memory and to the Polish servicemen with whom he served. The sight of the children
placing their little teddy bears (later to be donated to Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital) by the maquette of Wojtek brought home to me the true significance of my project.
Watching them, I knew that Wojtek would continue to be a power for good, improving many lives, spiritually and emotionally.

There is always something deeply moving about Remembrance Sunday. Whether the event takes place amid the panoply of a state occasion or at one of the small cenotaphs dotted around the towns and
villages of Scotland, it is a time to honour those who have gone before us, protecting our freedoms and liberties. It is also a time to reflect on the folly, waste and enormous cruelties of war.
Many of us come away from such events with a renewed resolve to promote, in some small fashion, greater harmony with other nations. It is as if the slate has been wiped clean and we are being given
another chance to leave the world a little better than we found it.

Wojtek, that artful Happy Warrior, had always had a way of eliciting an enormous amount of goodwill and help, often from most unexpected quarters. There was something about the bear which made
people open their hearts to him.

In that spirit, I felt certain the Wojtek Memorial Trust would be successful in its aim to raise funds for a memorial statue for the great bear, despite the fact that establishing the Trust
required surmounting more than a few hurdles. I have no doubt that there are many more challenges to face.

From the very outset I didn’t want Wojtek’s memorial statue to be a stiff military figure, nor did I want a cute and cuddly image of what was a very serious attempt to capture a
special moment in time. What was more, it had to engage
the feelings of both the Poles and the Scots. For many months I had an image in my head of the statue which could do
this, but it was extremely hard to define in words. I had been approached by a number of artists and sculptors who wanted the commission, but none, in my view, had really hit the mark. Although
they were passionate about the project, I didn’t feel that any of those who had approached me truly understood Wojtek’s story.

But that was to change. One night, as I sat in my office in Sunwick Farm after dinner, still wrestling with the images in my head, the telephone rang. It was Alan Beattie Herriot, a sculptor I
had heard of, but had never met. He introduced himself and then said: ‘This story has been going around in my head since I heard about it. I must do this.’

I don’t know where Alan had heard about Wojtek – in all probability his information had come from the flurry of media publicity about Wojtek’s life earlier in the year when it
was announced I wanted to have a statue created to the bear – but within minutes of talking to Alan, I felt I had found someone who really understood what I was trying to portray. He was on
my wavelength. His artistic vision reflected the reality I was trying to capture.

I found myself, in that first phone call, telling Alan about former camp inmate Augustyn Karolewski and the impression he had created in my mind as he talked of the men
walking down the road with Wojtek in front of our farmhouse. When they stopped, Wojtek stood and waited too. All Peter Prendys, or any of the men who handled him, had to do was to place a
hand on Wojtek’s shoulders and he would stop and stand there. If there was a conversation taking place, the bear would remain on his hind
legs, waiting for it to
finish. While keeping a weather eye out for any possible food opportunities, or possibly an adventure, he was simply another soldier waiting for his companions.

I explained to Alan that the whole legend of the bear was based around his composure and his almost human understanding of situations. Gossip being exchanged by his mentors may
have meant nothing to the bear, but his patience and good manners meant he was given a great deal of freedom whilst staying on the camp. Sunwick farmhouse was always within sight, so the men from
the farm were no strangers to Wojtek. Equally familiar from the other side of the camp were the Fleming family from Winfield Farm. They had been uprooted when the RAF commandeered their farmhouse
and grounds for the new Winfield airfield at the beginning of the war, but after its conclusion they had returned to start farming again. Though they didn’t anticipate having a bear around
their livestock, like everyone else locally, they knew and understood what this bear meant to the men of Winfield Camp.

When I came off the phone, I researched Alan’s career on the internet and was mightily impressed by what the art world had to say about him. Alan is regarded as one of Britain’s best
and most successful public sculptors. His distinctive works in bronze have won him acclaim across the United Kingdom, France and Holland. Working from his studio at Howgate, near Penicuik in
Midlothian, Alan is an artistic all-rounder – as well as being a first-class sculptor he is also a highly talented painter and has a strong interest in the portrayal of Scottish history.
Wojtek is part of that history.

There are several important Alan Herriot public sculptures in Scotland, including one of another animal who served with the military: Bamse, the St Bernard mascot of
Norway’s World War II resistance forces in Scotland, who were based in the east coast town of Montrose.

In that first conversation we had talked about Alan’s statue of Bamse. I was familiar with the story, having read the book about him. Before his death in Montrose, Bamse had lifted the
morale of the ship’s crew, and had become a kenspeckle figure to the local civilian population. When standing to battle quarters, he would take his place on the front gun tower of the
Norwegians’ ship, kitted out in a metal helmet the crew had specially made for him.

There were some striking parallels in Wojtek and Bamse’s ‘human’ behaviour. Like the bear, Bamse was capable of acting without supervision and didn’t need to be ordered
around. His was a peace-making and morale-boosting presence. Once he saved the life of a young Norwegian officer who was under attack from a man wielding a knife. Bamse pushed the officer’s
assailant into the sea. On another occasion the dog rescued a sailor who had fallen overboard by leaping into the water and dragging him ashore.

He was legendary for doing his rounds of the town and gathering up his Norwegian companions to take them back to their ship when they were the worse for drink; similarly, he was well known for
breaking up quarrels among his shipmates. Witnesses said he would rear up on two legs and put two massive paws on their shoulders to calm them down. He was quite well travelled, too. He hopped on
local buses unaccompanied, and would regularly make journeys to Dundee where he would get off at the bus
stop nearest to his crew’s favourite public house, the Bodega
Bar, and go in to fetch them back before curfew. His shipmates even bought him a bus pass, which they attached to his collar, to allow him to carry out his patrols. If Bamse couldn’t find his
shipmates he would simply take the bus back to base.

At the end of our conversation I put down the phone feeling elated and excited; an artist who already had experience of capturing the essence of a well-loved animal in the military for a public
statue was likely to produce something of great artistic merit. And so it transpired.

Within an hour of our telephone conversation, Alan had faxed over an image he felt summed up everything I had told him. I was delighted with the sketch; in a matter of minutes he had achieved
what I had been wrestling with for months. Many locals remember well the sight of a soldier and a bear walking down the long straight road to Sunwick – a stretch which was used by the late
Formula One racing hero Jim Clark, a local farmer and another local legend. Alan depicted the two as wandering figures, the soldier with his hand on the bear’s back, casual, peaceful but not
at the end of their journey. The memorial will be their journey’s end, a new gathering place for all Poles in Scotland, a place to think and wonder.

A few weeks later I visited Alan at his studio to see a plasticine model which he called a starting point. It was stunning. Alan’s studio is lit on three sides, but that day when I walked
in, a beam of light streamed down on the maquette, illuminating it alone among all the other works of art. I could see instantly the model worked on a level far beyond my expectations. The power
and grace of the relationship between man and bear were magnificent.
There were a few minor modifications required, mostly at Alan’s insistence. The greatest change
was his decision to remove the soldier’s helmet and have him carry it, which is what the men would have done in real life. The effect of that modification alone was dramatic; it somehow made
the whole scene more compassionate.

The next time I saw the maquette it looked like a bronze cast. But when Alan handed it to me, it was as light as a feather. This was to be my sales aid in raising the funds to cover the cost of
the final work. Back home my husband, Andrew, who has an eye for good artwork, was equally impressed. His approval was important to me because I had never discussed with him the representation I
had had in my mind’s eye. He was seeing the maquette for the first time and if it worked for him then I knew we were on the right track.

But there was one other person whose endorsement was absolutely vital – Augustyn Karolewski, the Pole who had recounted to me so many Wojtek anecdotes. He had been at Winfield Camp and had
lived the story; Kay, as he is known to us in the village, had to like it or it would all have been for nothing, or, at the very least, it would be back to the drawing board for Alan and
myself.

Kay, for an unconscionably long time, observed the figures of man and bear. Humming softly to himself, turning the model this way and that in his large, work-calloused hands, he carefully
scrutinised every detail. Perched on the sofa, I tried to read his face as he pondered over the maquette. The wait was excruciating, even though I sensed Kay, mischievous man that he is, was
deliberately prolonging the moment. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, he gave his honest approval and expressed his
liking for the whole thing. His only criticism
was that the word ‘Poland’ had to be included on the soldier’s lapel badge, a detail which Alan was delighted to accommodate.