Corporal Wojtek

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a company on the move, boots, and a large animal walking with them)
Iran, nineteen forty-two. A Polish company buys a bear cub from a boy.

[Verse 1]
They fed him condensed milk from a bottle made from a vodka flask.
He grew up in the camp, among soldiers, with no other bears at all,
so he did not learn to be a bear — he learned to be a soldier,
which meant he wrestled, and drank beer, and smoked cigarettes,
or rather ate them, and slept in the tents with the men,
and rode in the trucks, sitting up, looking out the window.

[Chorus]
And when the ship to Italy refused to take an animal
they ENLISTED him. Paybook, serial number, rank of private.
Corporal Wojtek by the end, of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company,
and he is on the roster, and the roster is in the archive.
Corporal Wojtek. They made a bear a soldier
because the alternative was leaving him behind.

[Verse 2]
At Monte Cassino he carried the crates. This is attested.
Boxes of shells, from the trucks to the guns, all through the battle,
copying the men, because that was what the men were doing,
and he did not drop one, which they mention every time,
and the company adopted a bear carrying a shell as its badge,
which you can still see, and which is a real military insignia.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
He went to Edinburgh Zoo when the war ended and they were demobbed,
and the men visited, and climbed in, and wrestled him, which was allowed,
and he lived until nineteen sixty-three, and was reportedly happiest
when somebody spoke Polish at him over the wall of the enclosure.
He would stand up. He would stand up for the language.
There is a statue of him in Princes Street Gardens now.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the company, moving off)
He never dropped one.
Not one crate. They always say that first.