A memorial to a Polish bear

There’s a campaign to erect a memorial a Polish bear. Well, an Iranian bear enlisted in the Polish army.

No joke.

Known as the “soldier bear” he saw action at Monte Cassino, in Italy, before being billeted – along with about 3,000 other Polish troops – at a camp in the Scottish borders.

And like any other combatant, he is even said to have had an official name, rank and number.

Now a campaign is underway to build a permanent British memorial to the remarkable bear who fought so valiantly for the Allied forces and lived out his final days in Edinburgh Zoo.

Voytek the Bear carried munitions for the troops and also discovered a spy. And his reward? Beer and cigarettes and access to the shower hut. Oh, and a retirement villa at the Edinburgh Zoo, where apparently his old comrades tried to chuck him cigarettes.

Polish veteran Augustyn Karolewski, 82, who still lives near the site of the camp in Berwickshire, said: ‘He was like a big dog, no-one was scared of him. “He liked a cigarette, he liked a bottle of beer – he drank a bottle of beer like any man.”

When the troops were demobilised, Voytek spent his last days at Edinburgh Zoo, where died in 1963.

Mr Karolewski went back to see him on a couple of occasions and found he still responded to the Polish language. He explained: “I went to Edinburgh Zoo once or twice when Voytek was there. “As soon as I mentioned his name he would sit on his backside and shake his head wanting a cigarette. “It wasn’t easy to throw a cigarette to him – all the attempts I made until he eventually got one.”

Yes, you can just imagine the Polish old soldier tossing lit cigarettes into the bear enclosure. Or did he toss him cigarettes and a lighter. If so, that’s one talented bear.

Anyway, best of luck getting a memorial to Voytek the Polish bear.

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Reminds me of that bear that lived at a gas station in Pigeon Forge, TN. It was before my time, but I’ve been told that there was a bear that lived in a cage at this gas station in Pigeon Forge. It was kind of a tourist attraction. Obviously you can’t do that sort of thing anymore, but folks would do anything to drum up business. Even cage a bear and show it off to the motor tourists. Sad really.

And like Voytek, this bear was partial to treats of a human nature. You know, junk food. Snack cakes. Peanuts. Bottles of coke and 7-up. He especially liked the coke. You could hand it into his big paws (if you were brave enough) and he’d tip it up and drink it right down.

Well, one day some drunken rednecks or maybe it was some uncouth yankees who weren’t raised to know any better gave the bear some gasoline in one of those coke bottles. Just handed it right over. They probably reckoned that the bear wouldn’t actually drink it. But it did. Just tipped the bottle up and drank it right down.

Well, that gas didn’t agree with the bear. It started frothing at the mouth and raging and rattling in its cage and throwing itself about. And to be honest, the workmanship on the cage maybe wasn’t what it should have been. Anyway, the bear got loose (scaring the pants off the drunken rednecks or uncouth yankees, depending on who’s telling the story). And it took off up the road. Back towards the park. I guess it wanted to go home. (Well, who can blame it?)

That bear ran right up the road. And the people in the cars were pulling over. It ran up past where the outlet malls are. It ran up past the all those miniature golf places that are there now. It ran past where Porpoise Island used to be. It ran on past where Dollywood is now. It just ran and ran.

It was running up toward the park and then, just about where the welcome sign is for the park it just stopped. Fell over in the road. Fell into a huddled hunk of bear right there.

And you know what happened?

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….

….

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It ran out of gas.

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Sorry. Sorry. My friend Vol-K told me that story one time as we were leaving the park, just as we were passing the sign and going the other way into Pigeon Forge. Man, she totally got me, too.

Years and years later she was visiting me in London and telling me about the bear scene in that horrible movie Borat and I said -“Did I ever tell you about that bear that was up in Pigeon Forge?” And she said no – and she had totally forgotten the story and I got her with it. Ha, joke revenge.

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Check out these awesome bear pics. Including this one, which should be a lesson to all gas station bears.

Welcome sign photo from Flickr user The Paradigm Shifter used under Creative Commons license.

Media darlings

John Bolton is the new darling of the BBC. But “darling” I mean, they like to have him on the shows, wind him up, let him spew and spin and spin and spew all in the hope of winning over public opinion for air strikes in Iran.

Mr Bolton’s been very interesting during the British hostage crisis. Saying before and after that Britain had no back bone. Hmm… that may be true, but I don’t think that the way that the UK government dealt with getting 15 kidnapped service personnel back from Iran was an example of lack of back bone. Saying that Britain had no back bone when these kids came back alive without handing over anything and without bloodshed is a sign of no class.

Wasn’t this John Bolton guy kinda fired anyway?

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Guess who else has no class? The UK Ministry of Defense. Yep. They’ve allowed the 15 detainees to sell their stories to tv and tabloid.

The Iranians have been having a field day. They say that the UK is using these sailors and marines for propaganda purposes. Ha. Ha. Ha. Pot. Kettle. Black.

Well, they’re British service personnel and so the British government can use them for propaganda – because you see, they’re our employees. Just like the stuff I do is used for promotion for my employers. That’s normal.

But I don’t normally expect to use my employment experience as fodder for this personal blog. And I wouldn’t expect to be able to sell my story about my work to a red top tabloid paper for a six figure sum and still show up on Monday morning.

Service personnel are free to write books and sell scripts or give interviews for money – after they no longer wear the uniform of service. While serving, they need to have clearance from the press and PR functions of their branch of service. And no money should change hands. You’ve already taken the Queen’s shilling.

I don’t blame the sailors and marines. They’re young. They’ve just come out of a scary spell of captivity. People are thrusting wads of money in their faces. If one agrees, then the others think “Am I missing out?” I blame those who’ve allowed them to do this.

The Great British Public concur. They’re not too happy about this – and that’s classic British understatement. They’re disgusted. But that’s OK, because now the Labour government have changed their minds:

The government did a U-turn late on Monday, reversing an earlier decision to allow service personnel to sell their stories. [Defence Minister Des] Browne said the sale of stories had been a “tough call” for the navy but those involved now accepted it had “not reached a satisfactory outcome” and lessons must be learned from the review.

No, Mr Browne. The problem is not a lack of a satisfactory outcome. That’s the point of acting on principle. In some areas, the ends (which actually haven’t been that bad) do not justify the means.

A two-percenter?

Via Volunteer Voters

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) – An Army private at Fort Campbell charged with the slaughter of an Iraqi family was diagnosed as a homicidal threat by a military mental health team three months before the attack.

Hmmm…a soldier… homicidal?

Actually they didn’t use to be. In World War II, very few American men fired their weapons in the vicinity of the enemy. That’s very few men in combat units. Even fewer actually shot to kill – about two percent of soldiers. Half of those two percenters were normal guys who believed they were there to do a job – and they were able to shoot and to kill and then they were able to come home and be normal. The other half were…well, psychopathic. They’d been waiting for this big turkey shoot all their lives. Finally, finally able to kill without consequence. Presumably, some of them came back and were able follow the observable rules of society and others weren’t.

The Army was pretty shocked when they came up with these numbers. Surely Americans were a little more bloodthirsty than that? Nope. Not really. Most people have an aversion to that kind of thing – particularly if they’re not in the heat of the moment. Many people can’t find it in themselves to do it. And if they do manage it, there are consequences. Mental consequences. It’s hard on a human to kill another human.

So the Army came up with some better training. More desensitizing and of course, practice, practice, practice. They were able to get a much higher percentage of soldiers to shoot to kill. They helped these soldiers find their inner killer. But I’m not sure they helped them with how to put it away again.