World Battlefronts: MEN AT WAR: Pals of the Jungle

The roads to Mandalay had never seen such strange companies of men: long-bearded Sikhs, tall, blond Britons, swart Gurkhas. Their companions were as strange. On almost every truck and tank perched a sad-faced monkey. A sheep marched beside an Indian Army officer, took cover with him in battle, lay down beside him at night. Fierce Gurkha warriors walked beside their mules, talked affectionately to them, brushed them devotedly (a Gurkha looks upon a mule as infallible, and weeps like a child when one is killed).

Perhaps the loneliness of the jungle explained it, perhaps it was merely because there was a great variety of livestock available; whatever the reason, the British Fourteenth Army in Burma was the world’s best at collecting pets. It was a tradition. The late Major General Orde C. Wingate had taken a cow buffalo along on his raids, once restored its health with precious brandy. Brigadier “Mad Mike” Calvert’s favorite was an elephant named Flossie. In Arakan an officer keeps a bear cub.

Wherever Lieut. General Sir Montagu George North Stopford led his XXXIII Corps last week, his flock of ducks went also. Every mess tent had its complement of parrots and parakeets. But even the Fourteenth’s men thought last week that a sergeant had reached the ultimate. His new pride & joy was a 10-ft. python, maintained in sheer defiance of Hilaire Bellocs advice on pets: “A python, I should not advise; it needs a doctor for its eyes, and has the measles yearly.”