Among the archives of J. H. Williams, kept by his son Treve Williams in Tasmania, were many documents, writing fragments, private letters, Susan Williams’s handwritten timeline of her married life, screenplays, movie treatments, and original manuscripts as they were written before being edited. (The original manuscript for Elephant Bill was titled “Elephants in Peace, Love, and War.”) I coded this material sequentially as Document 1, Document 2, Document S1, and so forth. J. H. Williams wrote five memoirs and his wife, Susan, one.
| EB | J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill | |
| SOF | J. H. Williams, Scent of Fear | |
| FOEB | Susan Williams, The Footprints of Elephant Bill | |
| FOEB | MS Original manuscript for The Footprints of Elephant Bill | |
| EB | MS Original manuscript for Elephant Bill |
1 with a dash of mysticism J. H. Williams, “ ‘Elephant Bill,’ ” The Times (London), July 31, 1958.
2 who could talk to elephants Kenneth Joachim, “Elephant Bill Is No More,” The Herald (Melbourne), August 4, 1958.
3 Williams had evolved into J. H. Williams, “ ‘Elephant Bill.’ ”
4 “than any other white man” James Bartlett, “Never Say ‘Lah-Lah’ to a Wild Elephant,” Daily Express (United Kingdom), May 8, 1953.
5 the lives of countless refugees J. H. Williams, “ ‘Elephant Bill.’ ”
6 wild mountainous terrain Philip Wynter, “Life’s Reports: Elephants at War / In Burma, Big Beasts Work for Allied Army,” Life magazine, April 10, 1944.
7 “a holy war” Marshall Pugh, “Let Animals Teach You to Live,” Daily Mirror (London), Wednesday, April 1952.
8 The Daily Mail’s headline “Elephant Bill Won His War,” Daily Mail (London), no date. From the archives of Treve Williams.
9 how much he owed Williams Sir William Slim, “Uncommon Adventure,” Broadsheet, The Bulletin of “World Books,” published by the Reprint Society, LTD., London, no date. From the archives of Treve Williams.
10 It was the elephants Pugh, “Let Animals Teach You to Live.”
11 “I’ve learned more about life” Ibid.
12 “Not a bad way to learn” Ibid.
13 Courage defined them Ibid.
14 how to be content with “I Speak for Myself,” radio broadcast transcript of “Elephant Bill” (Col. J. H. Williams, OBE), Disc No. DBU 52898, September 18, 1950, 1220 GMT. See also the original essay typed by Williams for the broadcast, which is slightly different, pp. 1–2.
15 “the most lovable” J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill (Long Riders’ Guild Press, 1950), p. 320. Hereinafter cited as EB.
16 “God’s own” Ibid., p. 166.
17 “The relationship” J. H. Williams, Big Charlie (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959), p. 37.
18 “I am convinced” EB, p. 64; Susan Williams, The Footprints of Elephant Bill (Leicester: Ulverscroft, 1975), p. 119. First published 1962 by William Kimber. Hereinafter cited as FOEB.
19 had become his religion Document Fragment 14, p. 4. Handwritten notes on the relationship between man and animals by J. H. Williams.
1 the raging Yu River J. H. Williams, Bandoola (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955), p. 153.
2 a sound like thunder A. W. Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests: The Sagacious Elephant Is Man’s Ablest Ally in the Logging Industry of the Far East,” National Geographic, August 1930, p. 246.
3 chocolate-colored torrent J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 153.
4 a thousand elephants by name Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph (London: Vintage Books, 2011), p. 10. First published in 2010 by The Bodley Head. McLynn estimates that there were twenty thousand working elephants in Burma. And A. C. Pointon, The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited: 1863–1963 (Southampton, UK: Millbrook Press, 1964), p. 45. Pointon says there were 3,028 BBTC elephants in Burma, the Salween, and Siam.
5 he could keep water Communication with elephant keeper Jenny Blackburn Theuman, December 19, 2010.
6 “No one who works” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 144.
7 Now, seven years later Conversation with Treve Williams, June 13, 2012.
8 The others were either Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 59.
9 Then Bandoola would Document S1, p. 53. Autobiographical screenplay. From the archives of Treve Williams.
10 maybe a hundred miles to go J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 154.
1 On a crisp November day J. H. Williams, “Elephants in Peace, Love, and War” (the original, unpublished manuscript that became Elephant Bill), pp. 3–8. Hereinafter cited as EB MS.
2 still practiced head-hunting Charles H. Bartlett, “Untoured Burma,” National Geographic, July 1913, p. 852.
3 performed human sacrifices R. G. Woodthorpe, “Explorations on the Chindwin River, Upper Burma,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, n.s., 11, no. 4 (April 1889): pp. 197–216, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1801163, accessed October 25, 2013.
4 into ghost cats Sir Herbert Thirkell White, Burma, Provincial Geographies of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), p. 33.
5 remote and little-known corners F. Kingdon-Ward, Burma’s Icy Mountains (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949), p. 5.
6 barbaric tribes Captain F. Kingdon Ward, In Farthest Burma: The Record of an Arduous Journey of Exploration and Research Through the Unknown Frontier Territory of Burma and Tibet (London: J. B. Lippincott, 1921), p. 18.
7 on January 26, 1920 J. H. Williams’s WWI records, National Archives, London.
8 Billy had led J. H. Williams’s WWI war records, British Library. Ref.: 1OR:L/MIL/14/67886.
9 turmoil of Lahore Ibid., under heading “Special Services in Peace or War.”
10 Nearly a million Wade Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), p. 15.
11 he truly thrived “I Speak for Myself,” radio broadcast transcript.
12 “My way” FOEB, p. 370.
13 “I developed a longing” EB MS, p. 1.
14 recruiting frenzy Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, pp. 58–59.
15 elite schools Harold Braund, MBE, MC, Distinctly I Remember: A Personal Story of Burma (Mount Eliza, Victoria: Wren Publishing, 1972), p. 20.
16 in 1863 Raymond L. Bryant, The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1824–1994 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), p. 64.
17 athletic over academic skill Braund, Distinctly I Remember, p. 57.
18 “A robust constitution” Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 16.
19 These firms required Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 239.
20 stellar personal references Braund, Distinctly I Remember, p. 21.
21 Just under six feet tall J. H. Williams’s WWI records, National Archives, London. Folio 142, ref: 9/11/106.
22 picked up Hindustani J. H. Williams’s WWI records, British Library. Ref.: 1OR/L/MIL/14/67886.
23 “good moral character” J. H. Williams’s WWI records, National Archives, London. Folio 142, ref: 9/11/106.
24 His official offer J. H. Williams’s original employment contract, London Metropolitan Archives. Ref.: clc/b/207/ms 40603/002, Folio 31.
25 Every day during the war Martin Pugh, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (London: Bodley Head, 2008), p. 4. And J. H. Williams, “Life Offered Only Adventure: J. H. Williams, Author of ‘Elephant Bill,’ ” no page number.
26 The elder, Nick Susan Williams, original manuscript for Footprints of Elephant Bill, p. 35. Hereinafter cited as FOEB MS. She says the firm was Orr Dignus and Co. From the archives of Treve Williams.
27 “Go down to Penamel cove” Document S1, p. 3.
28 On July 7, 1920 J. H. Williams’s original employment contract.
29 Weeks later Passenger list of the Bhamo from the P. Henderson and Co. steamship line. The passenger cargo vessel Bhamo was built in 1908 and scrapped in 1938. Gross tonnage: 5,239.
30 It was a mild, hazy Thursday Weather from the Liverpool Observatory records, National Meteorological Archive, Great Moor House, Bittern Road, Sowton, Exeter, UK.
31 travel between the two countries Braund, Distinctly I Remember, p. 26.
32 company’s home leave schedule Felicity Goodall, Exodus Burma: The British Escape Through the Jungles of Death 1942 (History Press, 2011), no page number.
33 But he was also thrilling Writing Fragment 8, p. 6.
34 well-liked high school student H. J. Channon, “Elephant Bill of Burma: An Early Adventure at Queen’s College.” Reminiscences of J. H. Williams by one of his schoolteachers. Unknown publication. From the archives of Treve Williams.
35 Once on board J. K. Stanford, Far Ridges: A Record of Travel in North-Eastern Burma 1938–39 (London: C. & J. Temple, 1946), p. 20.
36 games such as skittles Braund, Distinctly I Remember, p. 27.
37 a few weeks later Shipping information indicates these were generally two- or three-week trips, though J. H. Williams says in Document 10a, p. 1, that it was a five-week trip. Stanford, Far Ridges, pp. 17–20, indicates that the England to Burma run was a three-week trip.
38 lonely journey up-country Document 10a, p. 1. It appears to be a rough draft of the early chapters for Elephant Bill, but contains information not in the published version or EB MS.
39 The five-hour-long approach Cecilie Leslie, The Golden Stairs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), p. 32.
40 The wide street FOEB, p. 15.
41 Colorful buses Ibid.
42 It was noted FOEB MS, p. 15.
43 Loneliness may have been Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 241.
44 The timber even contains Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 23.
45 As a National Geographic Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 239. Raymond L. Bryant, “Romancing Colonial Forestry: The Discourse of ‘Forestry as Progress’ in British Burma,” The Geographical Journal 162, July 1996, p. 172, mentions the “low incidence of teak” in Burma.
46 A two-inch ring Burma Pamphlets No. 5: The Forests of Burma (Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1944), p. 48.
47 died and dried out Bryant, “Romancing Colonial Forestry,” p. 169.
48 “The rivers of Burma” Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 2.
49 Because the country E. J. Kahn, Jr., “A Reporter at Large: Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” The New Yorker, November 20, 1948, p. 96.
50 “their contact with primitive things” Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 246.
51 five to twenty years Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 52; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 13.
52 Sitting behind Document S1, p. 2. Differs from published work and amplifies details.
53 Packed in a teak box Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 239.
54 Rangoon was full Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), p. 120.
55 “Just crackers” Document S1, p. 3.
56 women outnumbering men Pugh, We Danced All Night, p. 3.
57 Green Imperial pigeons Bertram E. Smythies, The Birds of Burma, rev. ed. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1953), p. 423.
58 channel buoys Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 240.
59 seven lighthouses FOEB MS, p. 36. The Williams boys were trusted with firearms, and Jim carried a souvenir from one embedded in his cheek. On a bitterly cold day, when he was sixteen, his hands numb, he had attempted to gently lean his shotgun against a wall. But it slipped and went off, the pellets ricocheting into his face. With all the blood, his brother Tom, terrified, ran into the house, shouting, “Mams, Mams, come quickly, Jimmy is blinded!” A local doctor was summoned and, using the kitchen table as his surgical table, removed most of the pellets. Not one had hit his eye. Even then he was a master of the narrow escape.
60 “as wild as” FOEB MS, p 369.
61 “I never looked for” FOEB, p. 370.
62 His formal education J. H. Williams’s WWI records, National Archives, London; Channon, “Elephant Bill of Burma.”
63 popular friend Channon, “Elephant Bill of Burma.” J. H. Williams distinguished himself in class, as well as on the cricket pitch, the soccer field, and the debating team.
64 in 1915 J. H. Williams WWI records, British Library. Ref: 10R/L/MIL/14/67886.
65 who had died Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 68.
66 Copious soap Griffith H. Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases (Elibron Classics Series, 2005), pp. 158, 249. First published in Rangoon in 1910.
67 They usually weighed U Toke Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant (Rangoon: Trade Corporation, 1974), pp. 7–9.
68 African elephants have tusks Shana Alexander, The Astonishing Elephant (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 42.
69 shows in their temperaments Conversation with Dr. William Langbauer.
70 a sense of smell Raman Sukumar, The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 149.
71 They can cooperate Katy Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 61. Elephants may harbor the capacity for forgiveness, too. One set of female elephants in Africa, sisters, were observed after what must have been a tremendous fight between the two. The broken-off tusk of one was still jammed into the other’s flesh when they were spotted, walking peacefully along side by side. They had made up. And elephants have displayed what certainly looks like altruism—one calf, still nursing, shuttled his younger brother under the mother’s belly so that the littler one could nurse in his place.
72 as great as five miles Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 21. Thunder, earthquakes, and blue whales produce infrasound, too.
73 taller than many Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, pp. 7–9.
74 grow throughout his life Raman Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 77; Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 7. Sukumar says they grow until age thirty; other sources say throughout life.
75 “an elephant of good quality” Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 3
76 lavender shade of his skin J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 14.
77 When asked to choose FOEB, p. 270
78 rumble at his own joke Document S1, p. 41.
1 new khaki shorts Document S1, p. 5.
2 sitting in the portico Ibid., p. 3.
3 no one was looking Document M1, p. 9.
4 Drinking, most forest men found Indranil Banerjie, “Burra Peg: Raj Hangover on Indian Drinking Habits,” The Asian Age, November 23, 2011, http://archive.asianage.com/ideas/burra-peg-raj-hangover-indian-drinking-habits-887. Accessed November 20, 2013. “In India, the need to drink was augmented by the intense loneliness of the Europeans, who first came as traders holed up in dreary, isolated posts with little hope of seeing their home country in the near future. The East India Company not just encouraged drinking but also provided prodigious quantities of liquor for its employees stationed in India. This led to much intemperate behaviour.”
5 brand-new tent Document S1, p. 7.
6 next to Harding’s EB MS, p. 34.
7 “how not to receive” J. H. Williams, Scent of Fear (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957), p. 12. Hereinafter cited as SOF.
8 “as silently as” Rudyard Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” in The Jungle Books, vol. 2 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), p. 161.
9 aids the circulation Murray E. Fowler and Susan K. Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants (Ames, Iowa: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), pp. 81–82.
10 “looked as if she” EB MS, p. 4.
11 Mrs. Fat Bottom Ibid., p. 8.
12 into a kneeling position G. E. Weissengruber, F. K. Fuss, G. Egger, G. Stanek, K. M. Hittmair, G. Forstenpointner, “The Elephant Knee Joint: Morphological and Biomechanical Considerations,” Journal of Anatomy 208, no. 1 (January 2006): pp. 59–72. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2100174. Accessed October 8, 2013.
13 “regularly examined” Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 16.
14 more than sixty thousand muscles Eric Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 2002), p. 12.
15 The farther they were Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 120
16 It was supposed to be Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 14.
17 They had them Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 42; Alexander, Astonishing Elephant, p. 41.
18 “I should only be called” EB MS, p. 4.
1 No matter where Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 241; Document S1.
2 “Yes, I think so” Document S1, p. 8.
3 As a forest assistant Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 96.
4 “A knowledge of Burmese” Alan Rabinowitz, Life in the Valley of Death (Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008), p. 40. Even to those who had traveled extensively in Asia, Burmese simply sounded different. It is part of the larger Sino-Tibetan language family, is tonal, and tends to give equal stress to all syllables. The written language, though beautiful graphically, can be dizzying to a Westerner—made up of look-alike rounded, circular letters, which are difficult for newcomers to distinguish. The script was developed this way because palm leaves were used for paper, and the gentle curving lines would not tear through the delicate fronds the way straight ones would.
5 Surrounded by Smythies, Birds of Burma, pp. 370, 376, 382–83. Listen: http://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Otus-lettia.
6 thickets of pine Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 226.
7 An old volume Richard Lydekker, The Game Animals of India, Burma, Malaya, and Tibet (London: Rowland Ward, 1907).
8 three species of rhino Edwin Harris Colbert, “Notes on the Lesser One-Horned Rhinoceros Rhinoceros sondaicus,” American Museum Novitates, no. 1207 (November 12, 1942): p. 2; White, Burma, p. 91. So healthy was the tiger population that in the few decades before J. H. Williams’s arrival, at least two had been shot right in the urban heart of Rangoon.
9 It was home John LeRoy Christian, “Burma: Where India and China Meet,” National Geographic, October 1943, p. 502.
10 Burma was an ethnically diverse Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, pp. 45, 213; Burma Pamphlets No. 9: Burma Facts and Figures (Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1944), p. 3.
11 “where God lives” “Battle of Asia: Land of Three Rivers,” Time magazine, May 4, 1942.
12 said a silent prayer Skype conversation with Treve Williams, September 4, 2012. J. H. Williams belonged to the Church of England.
13 Sunup this time Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 242.
14 his own four elephants EB MS, p. 4.
15 Strangers always inspire curiosity Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 14.
16 targeting the richly Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 138.
17 In fact, there were Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, “Ritualized Bonding in Male Elephants,” The New York Times, July 21, 2011; Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 48.
18 “I’d like to start off” EB MS, p. 5.
19 “That remark” Ibid., p. 19.
20 It was said of FOEB, p. 82.
21 “By dawn” EB MS, p. 5. Harding called the jigger a “pau peg.”
22 “Good Lord!” EB, p. 19.
23 He conveyed Document S1, p. 10.
24 botanist Reginald Farrer Jamie James, The Snake Charmer (New York: Hyperion, 2008), p. 118.
25 Right away Document S1. This version of events, from J. H. Williams’s personal papers, amplifies the story told in “Elephant Bill.”
26 Often the uzis would It would later be called “allomothering” in science, and “allosuckling” if the friend fed the baby, too. Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 132.
27 “indeed cruel” EB, p. 67.
28 Carved from teak Ibid., p. 58; W. W. Smith, “The Elephant Scorns Our Machine Age: He’s Still ‘A-Pilin’ Teak’ with an Intelligence and Power Which Tractors Cannot Supplant,” The New York Times, July 28, 1929.
29 enough urine to fill a rain barrel Fifty-two gallons. Murray E. Fowler and Susan K. Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants (Ames, Iowa: Blackwell, 2006), p. 389.
30 Plus, there were Fowler and Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants, p. 72.
31 communal bunk Susan Williams, Elephant Boy (London: William Kimber, 1963), p. 72.
32 “a pretty hard life” EB, p. 57.
33 “My jungle life” EB MS, p. 6.
34 Most of his FOEB MS, p. 35.
35 “I have never studied them” Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), p. 370.
36 Over the years, J. H. Williams, “It Happened to Me: The Elephant Goes to School,” notes for a talk to schoolchildren, p. 1.
37 Because elephants need Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses, p. 14.
38 Elephants need a lot of it Elephant digestive efficiency is maybe as low as 22 percent. Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 56; George Schaller, The Last Panda (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 103.
39 Asian elephants consume Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 56.
40 While their uzis slept J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960), p. 41.
41 the forest was so thick Woodthorpe, “Explorations on the Chindwin River, Upper Burma.”
42 “Many young animals develop” EB MS, p. 51
43 well-executed bank heist Document S1, p. 13b. The destruction of crops by elephants would be a headache for J. H. Williams, but he would always admire the perpetrators. When shown a mud-stuffed kalouk, Williams thought, what “extraordinarily human animal[s]” they were. This act of anticipation and deceit signaled an intelligence not unlike our own. And when they got caught they seemed both chagrined and gleeful, pleased by their own naughtiness.
44 two-penny notebook Document S1, p. 21.
45 Any forester would EB MS, p. 7. “Fortunately they were all friendly and that they could ever be anything else, never entered my head,” J. H. Williams wrote.
46 “Everything of interest” EB MS, p. 10.
47 The first cuts released British TV documentary, Inside Nature’s Giants.
48 There was her heart Alexander, Astonishing Elephant, p. 17. A normal Asian elephant female’s heart would be about fifty-five pounds, but Pin Wa’s was enlarged.
49 No other mammal breathes Helen Briggs, “Elephant ‘Had Aquatic Ancestor,’ ” BBC News, April 15, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7347284.stm, accessed October 9, 2013. J. H. Williams didn’t know why then, and even many decades later it would remain an evolutionary mystery. Perhaps elephant ancestors were marine animals who needed strong muscles around the lungs to fight underwater pressure as they breathed through their trunks. That might also help explain why modern elephants are so at home in the water. Science would, in fact, come to hypothesize that elephants have aquatic ancestors.
50 A meticulous man Conversation with Treve Williams, Long Island, New York, June 10, 2011.
51 Everyone was so EB, p. 144.
52 tin tub SOF, p. 35.
53 patterns of tusk sets Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 15.
54 Tusk girth Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 120.
55 But he deduced EB MS, p. 11.
56 until Bandoola’s forties Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 76.
57 in charge of about three hundred Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 244.
58 the families of the riders EB, p. 115. For instance, the camp of U Po See, a camp leader Williams respected, did not allow families, only his own.
59 More than once All this village description is from FOEB, pp. 133–37.
60 The monks Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 34; FOEB, p. 136.
1 When the group reached their first camp EB MS, p. 11.
2 During the monsoon Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 4.
3 Plaited together Document S1, p. 13.
4 “To hunt is to learn” EB, p. 42. As a popular ditty of the time went: “What is hit is history / And what is missed is mystery.” And Stanford, Far Ridges.
5 Forest assistants might Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 96.
6 Tigers were plentiful Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 5. He would agree with the rational assessment of an authority on Burma at the time who wrote that the forests were home to “big, and so called dangerous, game, and poisonous snakes. The natural instinct of all wildlife, however, is to leave man well alone unless wounded or taken by surprise.”
7 Williams would fill out paperwork Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 243.
8 In the name of progress Bryant, “Romancing Colonial Forestry,” p. 171.
9 The industry may have Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, pp. 8, 18–19.
10 The men, using only axes Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 50; Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 243; Goodall, Exodus Burma. “With such ‘unpromising’ tools,” an astonished colleague of J. H. Williams’s wrote, “the largest trees are felled with speed and accuracy.” Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 243.
11 Logs twenty to thirty feet Document fragment 21, “Thoughts on Elephants,” p. 4. Fourteen-page typewritten paper from the archives of Treve Williams.
12 They showed Williams how EB MS, p. 131.
13 The fourteen-year-old, SOF, p. 153.
14 a spaniel had J. H. Williams did not have a dog yet; this one was borrowed for the hunt. Conversation with Treve Williams, June 10, 2011.
15 “humor and kindliness” FOEB MS, p. 40.
16 how Williams liked his tea Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, February 25, 2013.
17 he was exceedingly capable SOF, p. 153; J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 187. “Aung Net was someone to be thankful for,” Williams wrote, “a simple, loyal soul.”
18 it was always Aung FOEB, p. 276.
19 astonishing delicacies Angela Levin, “Fortnum and Mason: One’s Grocers as Old as Great Britain,” Daily Mail, November 3, 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491568/Fortnum-Mason-Ones-grocers-old-Great-Britain.html, accessed October 25, 2013; Jonathan Glancey, “A Facial at Fortnums? Never!” The Guardian (London), November 4, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/nov/05/foodanddrink.shopping, accessed October 25, 2013.
20 The intricate patterns Shway Yoe [Sir James George Scott], The Burman: His Life and Notions (London: MacMillan, 1896), pp. 39–41. The dense art covered so much tender skin that boys were generally administered opium to dull the pain during the tattooing. Few could bear having more than a few figures inked in at a time.
21 special tree bark Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 4.
22 Out of the pool Email with Jenny Blackburn Theuman, elephant keeper, February 22, 2012.
23 served as a barrier Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 48.
24 They also might grab J. H. Williams, “The Gentle Giants,” Leader Magazine, May 13, 1950, p. 18.
25 F for female Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. xii.
26 Haing, a male Sukumar, The Living Elephants, p. 123. The tuskless males, called makhnas in India, tended to be bigger than their tusked brethren. And their trunks seemed more thickset.
27 The uzi told him Document S1, p. 13a.
28 As Kipling Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” p. 152.
29 “When wild elephants are caught” EB MS, p. 42.
30 “very essence of brutality” Document M1, J. H. Williams’s detailed autobiographical movie treatment.
31 steeped in tradition White, Burma, p. 85.
1 deep-set dark eyes J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 30.
2 A superstitious man Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, February 9, 2013.
3 “There are ways” J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 21.
4 Bandoola had been born J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 34. Williams says Bandoola was born under a full moon. Using the NASA eclipse website, one can fix his birthdate as November 3, 1897. Ningyan is cited as Bandoola’s home village (p. 112). Ningyan later became known as Pyinmana, according to Hugh Nisbet, Experiences of a Jungle Wallah (St. Albans, UK: Fisher, Knight, 1910). p. 9.
5 Although tigers and elephants Rabinowitz, Life in the Valley of Death, p. 32.
6 a five-hundred-pound predator Susie Green, Tiger (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 12.
7 courageous Burmese military hero Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, pp. 112–13.
8 In the wild Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 134; Cynthia Moss, Little Big Ears: The Story of Ely (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 19. Babies watch their elders to learn which grasses are edible, wrap their trunks around clumps of it, rip it from its roots, and shake the dirt off. The lesson isn’t just visual. The calves reach up into their mother’s mouths to pull blades out to taste. In between, the learning curve can be comical. Often a baby will manage to tear grass out only to seem to forget what it was for—placing it on top of his head instead of in his mouth.
9 could not nurse Sukumar, Living Elephants, pp. 129–38. Calves nurse about three minutes out of every hour, and have physical contact about two dozen times an hour.
10 The system guaranteed Document S1, p. 30.
11 He traveled eighty miles J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 34.
12 White elephants came Jan McGirk, “Found: A Holy White Elephant,” The Independent (London), August 21, 2004; Alexander, Astonishing Elephant, p. 74; Jeffrey A. McNeely and Paul Spencer Sochaczewski, Soul of the Tiger (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press), pp. 102–3; Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 121; Sarah Amato, “The White Elephant in London,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 1 (September 22, 2009): p. 31; Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, pp. 3, 135–46; Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 11; Rita Ringis, Elephants of Thailand in Myth, Art, and Reality (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 94–96; Yoe, Burman, p. 481; Douglas H. Chadwick, The Fate of the Elephant (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1992), p. 348.
Sacred white elephants were rarely actually white. Over hundreds of years, some white elephants may have been true albinos with little or no pigment. But albinism in many animals, including humans, can be incomplete. Almost always, white elephants did have color. It was not a black-and-white, or even a gray-and-white, issue.
Translating the word simply as “white,” as we do in English, is inaccurate, and the translation causes an impossible expectation for Westerners. In 1884, a white elephant that P. T. Barnum had shipped to London was met with inevitable disappointment by the public.
The Burmese said there were twelve separate rankings of white elephant. In assigning these, pale skin, white nails, white tail hairs, or white eyes would count toward the designation. Many of the characteristics that distinguished such an elephant, though, were more nuanced; some of them, such as toenail number and shape, have nothing to do with pigmentation.
“It has been therefore found necessary to determine some infallible test points, which will demonstrate the right of the animal to his title,” Yoe wrote. “Determining white elephants is quite a science, and there is a very considerable literature on the subject. The Burmese skilled men fix upon two of these tests as superior to all others. One is that the elephant shall have five toe-nails on his hind feet instead of four. This is a good way of making certain, but occasionally there are indubitably black elephants which have the sacred number of toes. These are white elephants debased by sin, labouring under the evil kan of previous existences, and therefore ineligible for the honours accorded to the real animal. The other test is considered perfectly decisive, no matter what the precise tint of the skin may be. It is this: if you pour water upon a ‘white’ elephant he turns red, while a black elephant only becomes blacker than ever.”
There were worst things than finding out an elephant wasn’t sacred. Some physical features even marked an animal as profane, bringing bad luck to the owner—among them black spots or warts, skin that looked like that of a rhinoceros, or exhibiting a loose fold of skin from throat to forelegs that resembled bees settling in a swarm.
Gender was not a factor; females could make the sacred cut, though tuskers always created more excitement.
A strange element of the concept of the white elephant emerged in the West. Because the proper care of a white elephant was so expensive, it was said that to receive one as a gift could be financially disastrous. “White elephant” became an idiom for any gift as burdensome as it is valuable. (Though rulers did not ordinarily part with these sacred creatures.)
The untimely death of a white elephant would signal coming catastrophe or reveal some unworthiness in a country’s leaders. And the desire to possess these animals could lead to chaos. In the 1500s, Englishman Ralph Fitch wrote of a Burmese monarch, “The king in his title is called the King of the White Elephants. If any other has one and will not send it to him he will make war with him for it, for he would rather lose a great part of his kingdom than not conquer him.”
13 Williams realized J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 102. “Po Toke was my master in the study of elephants,” Williams said, “my most trusted assistant in their management.”
1 “Don’t make a practice” Document S1, p. 29.
2 After the first elephant J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 47; J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill, p. 173; letter published in The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 28 (1922): p. 1125. In his writing, J. H. Williams contradicts himself on the order of elephants killed, and/or the dates. In two books, he tells very different stories about the last elephant he shot. In Quest of a Mermaid, he said he shot an elephant for the last time in August 1921, but in his printed letter in The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, he says he killed the tusker with the “corrugations on the tusks” in May 1922. It’s possible he meant May 1921, but very doubtful. In J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill, p. 173, he says that Poo Ban, a great tusker in musth, was the last elephant he shot. The story of Poo Ban takes place in an area of Burma to which he wasn’t assigned till about 1930, and yet he had stopped killing long before that date. “The thought of killing even a wild tusker from then on was most distasteful,” he would write, “and to kill a tame elephant was tantamount to murder.”
3 “I allowed” EB MS, p. 94.
4 in his diary This diary and all of J. H. Williams’s journals would be lost in WWII.
5 Harding never mentioned EB MS, p. 14.
6 Harding pulled him aside Document S1, p. 30.
7 “I’ll back you” Ibid.
8 If he could do that Ibid., p. 39.
9 “If you saw Bandoola” Document M1, movie treatment fragment. No page number.
10 In a single decade Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 68.
11 And each one cost Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 246. Today’s dollars in consultation with Paul Solman, financial reporter, PBS, September 1, 2011. And Document fragment 21, p. 6.
12 “practical and humanitarian” Document fragment 21, p. 5.
1 rendezvoused with Harding J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 66. The meeting did not take place at Harding’s camp.
2 green canvas mailbag J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 28.
3 specialty cheeses Ibid., p. 60. Williams had to admit that his boss “knew how to treat a cheese to perfection.” And, truth be told, the pungent wheels were providing more tangible satisfaction to Williams than the pretty letter writers. Harding managed to keep his prized provisions from spoiling, and he had them “dressed in a starched white napkin with all the pomp of a London club.” Williams wasn’t just amused by Harding’s obsession; he felt that “it was one of the clues to the secret of his character, this effort to bring an English luxury into the Upper Burmese jungle. Though he was a real jungle salt, I feel that he had never become fully reconciled to being there, that his longing for his native country was constant and nagging, like an aching tooth.”
4 Bandoola would take According to Document 1, Bandoola could be as gentle as a female.
5 named Jabo EB, p. 138; FOEB MS, p. 64b. Williams, in fever, had fallen asleep in a canvas folding chair in front of his tent. He felt something icy against his skin and opened his eyes to see the beautiful face of a compact, powerfully built half-feral village dog who had pressed against him. When the dog looked into Williams’s eyes, his whole hind-end began wagging and wiggling “in default of a tail,” which had apparently been lopped off long before. Sick and dreaming of home and the Cornish cliffs, Williams fell in love with this “friendly, sympathetic creature.” Jabo—the name means “piebald”—was known to the villagers and the elephant men as a scrappy camp follower. When the dog returned to Williams’s tent later, one of the servants threw boiling water at him, scalding him. As sick as Williams was, he ordered chicken and rice cooked for the dog, which he hand-fed to him. (It would be the menu for all the dogs he owned in Burma.) He continued to offer food, and the dog reappeared nervously each day for the meal. Soon, Jabo was following Williams from camp to camp and flattening his little body up against him for pats and hugs. He would never be a truly domesticated dog—he avoided sleeping in the tent, and wherever they went, the dog would bound away from camp looking for love and excitement—but Williams and Jabo became companions.
6 for a trip to headquarters Rangoon was confirmed as the destination in an email from Treve Williams, June 26, 2011.
1 coated in green scum Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 244.
2 The sleeping logs Ibid., p. 246. One of Williams’s colleagues found out the hard way how quickly the terrain could be transformed. He had camped on the banks of a little creek, then crossed it for a day of work on the other side. But the rains started while he was out. When he tried to return to his own camp the stream had become a raging river. He stood at the edge, soaking wet, with water pouring off the brim of his hat, staring at a dry tent and good food on the opposite bank. Close but unreachable. “I could see through the mist of rain my own camp tantalizingly near, on the other side,” he wrote. He hunkered down as best he could, but was nonetheless exposed to the elements. It took almost two days for the water to calm enough for him to ford, by which time, he “went straight to bed with a roaring dose of fever.”
3 spell of malaria J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 195.
4 Aung Net would gently J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 19.
5 their animist cosmology H. N. C Stevenson, Burma Pamphlets No. 6: The Hill Peoples of Burma (Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1944), p. 27. Buddhism “is superimposed upon Animism and has not wholly replaced it,” explained a series of pamphlets on Burma published during colonial times.
6 Most are ghosts Andrew Sinclair, “Spiritual Land of Prayers and Pagodas,” The New York Times, June 8, 1986.
7 specific nats Melford E. Spiro, Burmese Supernaturalism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 108.
8 fond of coconuts Denis D. Gray, no headline, dateline Rangoon, Burma, Associated Press, February 27, 1983. Story on the persistence of nats in Burmese culture.
9 cheroots could be left James, Snake Charmer, p. 187.
10 two elephant handlers per calf J. H. Williams, “It Happened to Me: The Elephant Goes to School,” p. 2.
11 just how tolerant Document fragment 21, p. 8. Williams once saw a big old tusker adopt a little female calf who had lost her mother to anthrax. “It was a pathetic sight to see the baby searching between the forelegs of this big tusker for udders, and finding nothing but dry nipples.” The calf was weaned on bamboo shoots successfully, though she continued to suckle at the bull’s teats.
12 only three students enrolled J. H. Williams, “It Happened to Me: The Elephant Goes to School,” p. 2.
13 A small thatched shrine EB MS, p. 43.
14 They flirted with them Ibid., pp. 42–43.
15 Males would spend Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 179.
16 arranging a rendezvous Document fragment 21, p. 8.
17 Some Asian elephants Shermin de Silva, Ashoka D. G. Ranjeewa, and Sergey Kryazhimskiy, “The Dynamics of Social Networks Among Female Asian Elephants,” BMC Ecology 11, no. 17 (2011), http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6785/11/17. Accessed November 20, 2013.
18 The detailed sorting Virginia Morell, “Asian Elephants Are Social Networkers,” Science NOW, July 26, 2011.
19 could control the young ones EB MS, p. 47. Williams wrote that the bull elephant would act like “a stuffy strict old Nurse in the park,” who seemed to say to his charges, “Don’t you dare speak to those children coming toward us.”
20 Gathering logs Susan Williams, Elephant Boy, p. 72.
21 He worried J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 82.
1 On a sweltering Treve Williams, in a June, 13, 2012, conversation, provided the year as 1922.
2 Bandoola was right on schedule Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 45. Wild African elephants start a little later—closer to thirty. See also Cynthia J. Moss, Harvey Croze, and Phyllis C. Lee, The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Animal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 278.
3 The strength of musth Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 108.
4 Musth had been recognized Ibid., p. 101; Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses, p. 76.
5 “Excitement, swiftness, odor, love passion” Franklin Edgerton, trans., The Elephant-Lore of the Hindus: The Elephant-Sport (Matanga-Lila) of Nilakantha (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985), p. 81. First published in New Haven, Conn., by Yale University Press, 1931.
6 only in 1981 Sukumar, Living Elephants, pp. 101, 155; Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 38, 39; Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 77. Part of the confusion arose because African female elephants also secrete fluid from their temporal glands when excitedly greeting one another, though the chemical composition of the fluid is different from that of musth bulls. Even Asian female elephants occasionally dribble fluid from these glands, but its purpose remains a mystery.
7 levels of the hormone Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 38; Alex Shoumat-off, “Agony and Ivory,” Vanity Fair, August 2011, p. 125.
8 Bigger, stronger males Sukumar, Living Elephants, p.114.
9 running in the opposite direction Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 37.
10 are attracted to them Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 113.
11 recognized four stages Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, p. 45.
12 A musth bull is pungent Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 116.
13 He stands tall Ibid., p.103.
14 Depending on the bull’s age Ibid., p. 25.
15 a thousand pounds Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 25.
16 impairs their immune systems Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 118.
17 like dangerous convicts Gale, Burmese Timber Elephant, pp. 45–46. The animals were given plenty to drink, but carefully. A large drum of water placed within their reach would be replenished using a long bamboo trough. Droppings would be swept away using extended rakes. Any food was simply thrown in the animal’s direction. No human limbs were ever to be within trunk-length of the wild-tempered creatures.
18 argue confidently Williams, Bandoola, p. 89; Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 175; Sukumar, Living Elephants, p. 101; Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 255. Many believed that musth had nothing to do with reproduction. Over time, Williams had heard much about the condition as he sat around the campfires at night, sipping whiskey and learning from the riders. But there was always such disagreement about it, even in the literature. Because males in musth secrete copious amounts of fluid from their temporal glands, a pair of modified sweat glands located on either side of their heads, many people thought of musth almost as a cold: One text even referred to it as “Congestion of the Temporal Glands.” But the idea that musth was a medical problem didn’t seem plausible to Williams, even this early in his career. He said he “was convinced that there was nothing abnormal about musth, unless the sexual urge was to be considered abnormal.” National Geographic magazine concurred with the nonsexual diagnosis: “There is no need to go into the question of must,” the writer, using an alternate spelling, maintained, “that curious temporary insanity which, at almost regularly stated seasons, attacks males. In my opinion, it is not, as some people believe, a sex state. The cause is hard to determine, but it may be an overcharging of certain glands which have their exits in the face of the animal.”
19 the riders called pa-ket-hlwe Evans, Elephants and Their Diseases, p. 12.
20 nearly touched the ground Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 74; Fowler and Mikota, Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants, pp. 104, 353. The elephant’s penis is so large that biologists say it is “theoretically possible for an elephant to step on the penis.” In fact, one unfortunate elephant in Africa was observed inadvertently kicking his own penis as he ran—he had been wooing a female when a larger bull started chasing him and he didn’t have time to retract it.
21 refined courtship Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 41.
22 The intercourse lacked Document 1a, p. 55.
1 Within two years Conversation with Treve Williams, June 13, 2012.
2 at the same site J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 100.
3 They got pregnant “The Picture Post,” May 1950. Article fragment from the archives of Treve Williams. “When a mating or suspected mating is observed,” Williams said, “a note is entered in the inspection-book, and on the twenty-first month following that entry the expectant mother is invariably rested. After the birth of the calf she is usually in harness again within two months.”
4 As Williams got better J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 106. A local physician, “Doc Picary,” taught him some basics, such as how to sew up a wound. For this, Williams scrubbed in on a leg amputation. Though the sight of the severed foot in a waste bin under the operating table nauseated him, he collected himself, taking the doctor at his word that suturing flesh was “a lot easier than darning socks.”
5 Because purified antibiotics Pugh, We Danced All Night, p. 47; Robert H. Ferrell, The Twentieth Century: An Almanac (New York: World Almanac Publications, 1984), p. 158. Penicillin would be discovered in 1928.
6 It provided antimicrobial “Sugar Speeds Wound Healing,” People’s Pharmacy, http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2007/09/17/sugar-speeds-wo/, accessed October 14, 2013.
7 sugary swallow Email from Treve Williams, June 14, 2011.
8 “sure that she liked me” Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and They Matter (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2007), p. 13. The modern discipline of ethology had not even begun when Williams had that thought. And yet his conclusion would be echoed decades later by a leader in that field. “My baseline concerning animal emotion and sentience is pretty simple,” Marc Bekoff has written. “Animals will always have their secrets, but their emotional experiences are transparent.”
9 a life-and-death struggle Philip Wynter, “Elephants Go to War in Burma: British Officer’s Strange Task,” The Argus (Melbourne), February 29, 1944.
10 she lifted the baby Payne, Silent Thunder. Payne describes a scene just like this in Africa.
11 “the finest call” EB MS, p. 54.
12 a “phut, phut, phut” sound Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 94.
13 a female in her midthirties J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 110. He says she could live another thirty years.
14 Retired elephants didn’t have Article fragment from the Picture Post, no publication date or page number. From the archives of Treve Williams.
1 not a spare ounce Document S1, p. 31.
2 on leave once Conversation with Treve Williams on Long Island, New York, June 10, 2011.
3 an intense love affair Email correspondence from Treve Williams, June 29, 2012.
4 despair wasn’t unusual Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation correspondence, letter to “Wroughton,” July 8, 1925, London Metropolitan Archives, MS 40609/003. Among Williams’s young colleagues, the lack of love was a pervasive complaint. Men who stayed on the job, enduring malaria, dysentery, and broken bones, were undone by loneliness. Right at the moment Williams was in his doldrums, one of his colleagues with Bombine, P. C. Hill, was abruptly terminating a very promising career. He might have tried to conceal the reasons for his resignation, but his superior knew better. The boss wrote in a letter that Hill’s “very urgent private reasons” could only mean he had fallen for a woman. To the company, this kind of lovesickness was a hazard as real as typhus, though a girlfriend, the forest assistants knew only too well, was much harder to contract than some bacterial infection.
5 would not marry J. H. Johnstone to Christopherton, August 17, 1928, London Metropolitan Archives, MS 40609/003.
6 if he could hold out J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 103–7; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 45; Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, pp. 209–10. While taking a fishing vacation in a remote forest to forget his troubles, he was invited to a village’s rice festival. He seemed so pathetically loveless that he was offered a beautiful half-caste girl, who he believed was a sex slave. When he declined, he felt shaken but grateful to know he wasn’t so far gone that he would take advantage of such a creature. For love, what choices did Williams have? “It was a general custom,” one historian wrote, “from the earliest days for a liaison usually temporary, on rare occasions permanent, to be formed between Englishmen and the attractive daughters of Burma.” This was despite the British government’s efforts to discourage civil servants from the “practice of co-habitating with native girls, or accepting them as presents.”
7 The writer George Orwell Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 211.
8 his personal cook FOEB MS, p. 41. Joseph marched ten miles a day with the rest of the men and then got to work setting up his jungle kitchen. For a stove, he used “a twist of iron resting on two stones” over charcoal. An old kerosene tin was his oven for baking bread. He had canned goods, but he always seemed to produce meals from fresh food—vegetables picked up in little villages, bush meat Williams shot for the pot. And, day in day out, he would produce three- or four-course meals for lunch and supper.
9 used his “stump” SOF, p. 153. San Pyu’s right arm and hand were extraordinarily strong and nimble, Williams said, and he was a master with his machete.
10 she was gone J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 107. “While I was swimming I let her loose in a pool which was clear as gin,” Williams wrote. “She came back to the rocks three or four times and chatter-barked to me. Then I caught sight of three other otters schooling in the pool. The three soon became four, because Taupai joined their game and company. It was the last I saw of her, sporting with them in the clear water. I said good-by to her with a contented heart.”
11 consider resigning J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 107–10. As an escape, he poured his energy into a scheme to extract green opal, even applying for a mining license in the area in which he was shown a promising streak in an outcrop of limestone. He fantasized about becoming rich, but the funny thing was that even with all the money in the world he couldn’t imagine leaving his elephants. He dreamed of using his fortune to set up a breeding program for them. When the company said it wasn’t interested in his opal scheme, he figured he had better collect himself and make a decision one way or another about his future in Burma. The fact that elephants remained an integral part of even his wildest fantasies was telling. He was hooked. He couldn’t go anywhere and leave them behind. But he would write later that in making this decision—to stay in Burma or give it all up—he merely flipped a coin. That was Billy Williams’s way of keeping private things private, of glibly narrating a story that was actually painfully close to his heart: spin a playful anecdote out of a wrenching decision. Whether arrived at through a coin toss or an agonizing soul search, it was, of course, the life with elephants that won.
12 bleeding profusely J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 99–100. The story is told out of order in Bandoola. The incident happened two years after the stories it’s set with. And then Bandoola recuperated for a full year.
1 In 1926 Document 3, p. 2. This version is very different from the one in SOF. Williams changed the date and circumstances of the stabbing, which occurred in 1926, to fit the story he tells set in 1931. I’ve relied on private papers for the true story. EB, p. 255, also lists the incident as having taken place in 1926.
2 attracted to trouble Document 3, p. 2.
3 “the New Year’s resolution” SOF, p. 32.
4 to a valley near Bertram S. Carey and Henry Newman Tuck, The Chin Hills: A History of the People, Our Dealings with Them, Their Customs and Manners, and a Gazetteer of Their Country, vol. 1 (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing Burma, 1896), p. 6.
5 a week later Document 3, p. 3. Differs from SOF. Ten days instead of eight.
6 he rightly figured Alcohol is a vasodilator.
7 never made by foreigners Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, Burmah and the Burmese (London: George Routledge, 1853), p. 23; Document 2, p.53.
8 an unceasing hell Marc Abrahams, “Going to Great Lengths for Swear Words,” The Guardian, March 31, 2009; Mackenzie, Burmah and the Burmese, p. 24. Among the endless curses invoked against a perjurer in the Book of Oath were: “May they be destroyed by elephants, bitten and slain by serpents, killed and devoured by the devils and giants, the tigers, and other ferocious animals of the forest. May whoever asserts a falsehood be swallowed by the earth, may he perish by sudden death, may a thunderbolt from heaven slay him,—the thunderbolt which is one of the arms of the Nat Deva.”
9 already been given Document 2, p. 56. Aung Gyaw had been filled “with a great feeling of remorse and injury far deeper than what I had suffered physically.”
1 “The discharge” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 154.
2 joined Kayem Conversation with Treve Williams on Long Island, New York, June 10, 2011.
3 set to retire Document S1, p. 40. Harding retired about five years before Williams met Susan.
4 Harding’s head J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 168. This story is told out of order in Bandoola. It had to have happened before he worked in Pyinmana, while he was still working the Upper Chindwin. He was in Pyinmana in 1930.
5 nature of leadership Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 66. Years later, prominent elephant researcher Katy Payne would ponder these same indicators, and over time her thinking about elephant leadership would evolve. After witnessing group dynamics among elephants, she began to believe it was less a dictatorship of the matriarch, as was commonly thought, and more a matter of agreement and participation from all the elephants. It is complex.
6 the trunk knocking on the ground Conversation with Dr. William Langbauer, September 5, 2012. See also Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 94.
7 subtle cooperation Payne, Silent Thunder, p. 25.
8 “authority without being a bully” Pugh, “Let Animals Teach You to Live,” p. 2.
1 wear a metal bell Smith, “Working Teak in the Burma Forests,” p. 244.
2 “If the killing” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 173.
3 appear very remorseful Ann Belser and Marylynne Pitz, “Elephant Kills Keeper at Pittsburgh Zoo,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 19, 2002; Moss, Croze, and Lee, Amboseli Elephants, p. 124; conversation with Dr. William Langbauer, September 5, 2012. In an American zoo many years later, a generally docile elephant killed her keeper while on a walk with him and her calf. It was a misunderstanding over a squeal from her calf. When the elephant saw the keeper lying crumpled on the ground, she wrapped her trunk around him and lifted him upright. She appeared to be desperately trying to stand him up on his feet again. Another tusker J. H. Williams knew wouldn’t let anyone near the uzi he had just killed, employing a behavior scientists call “body guarding.”
1 Late in 1928 Conversation with Treve Williams, Long Island, New York, June 13, 2012.
2 most valuable woodlands Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 227.
3 A few years earlier In 1923. Ibid., p. 131.
4 murder of a forest official Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, pp. 137, 138.
5 Saya San went further Ibid., p. 138.
6 “a small fraction” Williams, Bandoola, p. 111.
7 three distinct chapters Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, pp. 8–13; Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 11.
8 The country’s monarch Amato, “The White Elephant in London,” p. 31.
9 The royal couple Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 43.
10 Indians were recruited William Fowler, We Gave Our Today: Burma 1941–1945 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2009), p. 62.
11 The colonialists considered The Burmese were “regarded as work-shy” according to Goodall, Exodus Burma.
12 53 percent of the population Goodall, Exodus Burma; census from 1931.
13 swelling in limbs Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, February 4, 2013.
14 experimental anthrax vaccine In Williams’s first year, Bombine lost thirty-one elephants to anthrax; later he would see tolls of nearly a hundred in one season. Williams had used red ink to track where anthrax deaths had occurred. With the worst outbreaks, his little map had looked as if it were running with blood. EB MS, p. 57; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 69. The 1919–20 working season saw thirty-one elephants lost from the Bombay Burmah stables; 1923–24 was brutal with ninety-one deaths; and sixty elephants would die in 1927–28.
15 bursts of eighteen miles an hour Sukumar, Elephant Days and Nights, p. 99. Holly Williams, “How Fast Can a Human Run?,” The Independent, May 3, 2010, says the fastest runners were clocked between twenty-three mph and twenty-eight mph.
16 Even at night in the tent J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 117. The dog had a strong work ethic, guarding any item he was told to. When Williams needed to leave him behind one morning, he figured the best method for making Ba Sein stay was to give him a freshly caught fish to guard. Ba Sein did as he was told, threatening any of the camp workers who approached. When Williams returned later, before he could get to his own tent, he was told the dog had gone mad. With the prevalence of rabies, it was a horrifyingly real prospect. Williams cautiously walked forward calling Ba Sein’s name, ready to defend himself against a frothing monster. “Then I caught sight of him,” Williams wrote. “There he was sitting on guard beside the fish, just as I’d left him. He wagged his twisted tail at me.” There was nothing wrong with his loyal dog. He was fine. He had just been doing what he was told to: scaring off anyone who came near the fish. Williams felt a wave of relief, and started joking with the animal. “ ‘Are you mad, Ba Sein?’ I asked. ‘Mad?’ he seemed to answer, ‘yes, mad with delight!’ and he rushed round my legs. We loved each other dearly.” As a reward, the fish was baked for Ba Sein and served to him on a bed of rice.
17 Activists had discovered David I. Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 34–35.
18 fight off the rebellion Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, pp. 209–11. Crucial to hunting down Saya San was the help given by members of one of the country’s largest minorities, the Karens. Many had converted to Christianity and were loyal to the British.
19 Palway Creek In the Pyinmana region, near the current capital.
20 When he fled Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar, pp. 34–35; Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, p. 209.
1 Stephen Hopwood FOEB, p. 3; SOF, p. 70. Hopwood is mentioned in many texts about Burma at the time, including Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, pp. 81, 108, 140; and in a letter from J. K. Stanford linking Hopwood to Kipling, The Kipling Journal, http://www.johnradcliffe.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/textfiles/KJ172.txt, accessed October 25, 2013.
2 fishing in a stream J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 180. Typical of the “conservators” of his time—he said he had shot one tiger and was hoping to bag another. Hopwood observed jungle etiquette, inviting Williams “to pitch down with him on his camp.”
3 served as a field gunner FOEB MS, p. 3.
4 He was said to know U Tun Yin, Wild Animals of Burma (Rangoon: Burma Civil Service, 1967), p. 136.
5 Helen’s name FOEB MS, pp. 3, 4.
6 “slender girl” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 180; FOEB MS, p. 31. Susan says she’s always been “one of the world’s lean kind.”
7 She was twenty-eight Susan Williams’s passport, issued September 2, 1932, in Rangoon, documents her birthdate as September 16, 1903. From the archives of Treve Williams.
8 her gray eyes Susan Williams’s passport, issued September 2, 1932, in Rangoon.
9 khaki safari outfit FOEB MS, pp. 6 and 19. Susan talks about the incredible “trousseau” Hopwood paid for.
10 “was it just my hat?” J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 181.
11 “delighted to see” FOEB, p. 61.
12 “tiger hour” FOEB MS, p. 22.
13 troubled global economy Ferrell, Twentieth Century, p. 166. Western nations were suffering high unemployment, bank failures, and governments struggling with debt and the inability to pay war reparations.
14 possibility of timber extraction Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74.
15 he could handle anything FOEB, p. 72. While sitting by the fire, suddenly, Molly became alarmed—the hair of her back standing straight as she leaped up from under Susan’s legs. The dog ran to Williams and stood wild-eyed, staring into the darkness, where they then heard the muffled cough of a big cat. Williams said only a tiger or leopard would inspire such terror in the dog. Although bold leopards had sometimes invaded camp, Williams was certain that the fire would keep it at bay. He patted Molly, speaking to her reassuringly. Susan noticed how the dog visibly relaxed some and even wagged her tail, but, still she remained alert, and would not sit down. She and Jim talked for a while longer and then Williams saw that his dog was still anxious. He cupped Molly’s face in his hands, looked lovingly at her, and said, “It’s all right, old girl—he’s gone long ago.”
16 most intelligent dog J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 206.
17 “a lovely dog” FOEB MS, p. 20. Susan genuinely loved dogs. She had been pining for one since reaching Burma, but was forbidden by Hopwood because of the prevalence of rabies. She had taken in a little street dog anyway, and when it showed signs of the disease, Susan had to be treated at the Pasteur Institute in Rangoon with a series of painful injections to her abdomen using a large needle.
18 most fashionable suburb “Burma: Yogi v. Commissars,” Time magazine, October 4, 1948.
19 He Man replied SOF, p. 73.
20 The thousand-year-old Buddhist shrine James, Snake Charmer, p. 108.
21 “floodlights by night” Christian, “Burma: Where India and China Meet,” p. 489.
22 words of W. Somerset Maugham W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour (Garden City: Doubleday, 1930), p. 8.
23 many lamps Ibid., p. 11.
24 song of the cicadas Ethel Mannin, Land of the Crested Lion (London: Jarrolds, 1955), p. 22.
25 thousands of gold and silver bells Jamie James, “Glorious Golden Pagoda,” The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2008.
26 “Ghoulies and Pixies” EB MS, p. 1.
27 He was attracted to the unknown Email from Treve Williams, April 4, 2012.
28 “community of all living creatures” Document fragment 21, p. 4.
29 “It was not necessary” SOF, p. 81.
1 Susan Margaret Rowland Marriage certificate, All Saints, Evesham Parish, No. 142, September 9, 1932.
2 consisting of 550 islands Tony Perrottet, “Babar and Me and the Deep Blue Sea,” Condé Nast Traveler, January 2010.
3 Some of the islands Teresa Levonian Cole, “Would You Andaman Eve It?,” The Guardian, March 3, 2007.
4 Ptolemy called them Ibid.; Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Henry Yule, book 3, chapter 13.
5 Williams’s Burmese friends Partial document titled “Andaman Diary,” p. 4. From the archives of Treve Williams.
6 He would have three Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74.
7 “I had no briefing” “Andaman Diary,” p. 1.
8 The only timberwork Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74.
9 “a Forest engineer” “Andaman Diary,” p. 1. In SOF, his name is spelled Jeff, but in “Andaman Diary” it is Geoff. Williams places the name in quotes signifying, presumably, that it is a pseudonym anyway.
10 He believed now SOF, p. 110.
11 thousands of varieties Ibid., p. 136; Teresa Levonian Cole, “Only Halfway to Paradise,” The Sunday Telegraph (London), March 3, 2007.
12 saltwater crocodiles Cole, “Only Halfway to Paradise.”
13 robber crabs Perrottet, “Babar and Me and the Deep Blue Sea.”
14 Singapore-based “Andaman Diary,” p. 2.
15 Supermarine Southampton flying boats In Susan Williams’s memoir, and in Williams’s original manuscript, these planes are referred to as Sunderland flying boats, but this model plane was not yet in the air at that date. In SOF, the planes are identified as Southamptons. Supermarine Southamptons were popular British planes between WWI and WWII, and fit the time frame. It’s likely that his editors caught the error and fixed it for the published book.
16 There was plenty of timber Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 74. This source says there was no teak.
17 “You’re on the wrong ship” FOEB MS, p. 33;
18 a terrible “heartache” “Andaman Diary,” p. 1.
1 “It was a glorious morning” FOEB MS, p. 39.
2 At 9:30 a.m. Wedding registry from the archives at Evesham Parish, scan of page provided by Katy Tarplee, parish administrator, Church House, Market Place, Evesham; FOEB MS, p. 38.
3 well-stocked saloon car FOEB, p. 93; John Foster Eraser, S. Edward Lunn, and F. H. Lowe, Round the World on a Wheel: Being the Narrative of a Bicycle Ride of Nineteen Thousand Two Hundred and Thirty-Seven Miles Through Seventeen Countries and Across Three Continents (London: Methuen, 1899).
4 the country’s second largest city Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 13.
5 spectacular orchids Christian, “Burma: Where India and China Meet,” p. 504.
6 Jim and Susan walked FOEB, p. 103.
7 grow chili peppers FOEB MS, p. 51.
8 Installing the “wireless” Stanford, Far Ridges, pp. 101–2.
9 The connection was so deeply felt Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 31, 2013.
10 wool blankets FOEB MS, p. 62. One night, they heard coughing coming from the area where the men slept. Jim shouted out, asking who it was. “Old Joseph appeared,” Susan wrote, “his teeth chattering as if he was in a bout of fever.” “How many blankets have you got old chap?” Jim asked. “Only this one Sahib,” Joseph said, as he lifted a tissue-thin cotton blanket from his shoulders. Jim, as was his tradition, had issued warm wool blankets to each man at the start of the cold season, but they always seemed to disappear, often lost in card games. Joseph, however, had sent the substantial blanket off to his wife and children. Jim looked at Susan and she went off to dig one of their two spares out of a trunk.
11 a sure death sentence J. H. Williams, In Quest of a Mermaid, p. 107.
12 field clinics FOEB, pp. 176–77. One of Williams’s most amazing cases was a tree feller who had been attacked by a sun bear. These small bears with sleek black hair and distinctive orange-yellow V-shaped necklaces of fur have sickle-shaped claws. Their jaws are strong enough to crack nuts. After tangling with the bear, the man was carried in to Williams. A huge sheet of his scalp had been ripped from his skull and dangled down, covering his face. Williams gently raised the gory mass and held it away from the man’s face. He cut the hair off, cleaned everything, folded the flap of skin back over the man’s head, and stitched it. The man’s eyeball was dangling down his cheek. Williams gently pressed it back into its socket, and then sewed up deep gashes in his lips and jaw, where even the bone had been exposed.
13 “The wonderful beauty” FOEB MS, p. 53.
14 And everywhere leeches Kingdon Ward, In Farthest Burma, p. 220. Frank Kingdon-Ward, the fearless English botanist who would survive earthquakes, an impaling, and a perilous spill from a cliff, traveled extensively in Burma and wrote with horror about the leeches. “As for me,” he wrote, “leeches entered literally every orifice except my mouth, and I became so accustomed to the little cutting bite, like the caress of a razor, that I scarcely noticed it at the time. On two occasions leeches obtained such strategic positions that I only noticed them just in time to prevent very serious, if not fatal, consequences.” Men feared them lodging in the penis or anus. They swarmed the traveler, finding purchase on his scalp, armpits, inside his ears, “in fact everywhere,” he said.
15 Gerry Carol FOEB MS, p. 77. Gerry Carol is called “Tony Stewart” in her published book, p. 139.
16 trebling the quinine Writing fragment entitled “Second Story, Second Roll: Hydrophobia, etc.,” by J. H. Williams, p. 23. From the archives of Treve Williams.
1 As a boss Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 96, says Williams was promoted to forest manager in 1930.
2 “punkah-wallahs” FOEB, p. 185.
3 Kipling had seen Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” p. 152.
4 Aung Net knelt J. H. Williams, Bandoola, p. 187.
5 The ripples of the Great Depression Bryant, Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, p. 140.
6 By the end of the month FOEB MS, p. 76. The night before the Williamses departed, a wild party was thrown for them in the military policeman’s bungalow. Susan broke away early to go sleep on the boat that would take them across the Chindwin in the morning, and at about two thirty was awakened by Williams and two pals. After more drinking aboard the launch, the three men ran as fast as they could down the wobbly gangway. They all made it, and as the two pals sang “Good-bye, Billy Old Boy,” Williams tried to run back aboard, but he fell into the murky river, where he had to be retrieved “drenched and muddy.”
7 He sent the snakeskin FOEB, pp. 218–21. Treve Williams still has this snakeskin in a cupboard in Tasmania.
8 Bandoola was dismissed J. H. Williams, Bandoola, pp. 137–40. Williams thought back to a situation similar to this one in which Bandoola’s athleticism and intellect had shined. It took place in a dark, steep gorge along the Upper Chindwin. The floor of it was strewn with boulders the size of houses. After the monsoon, when the water level dropped to a trickle, thousands of logs, some forty-five feet long and weighing a few tons, were left stranded. They were piled up on one another, jammed against a rock wall, or teetering dangerously on top of boulders.
With an assistant, whom Williams called “Gerry Dawson” in his writing, Williams called for nine elephants (ten was considered an unlucky number by the riders). The elephants arrived and set to work. While the other elephants began simply removing logs one by one, Bandoola chose a very different strategy. He would gingerly walk up on the pile until he came to a wobbly log. That’s precisely what he was looking for: the keystone. Backing away to solid ground, he would then reach up to move that one creaking log, and watch the rest of the pile loosen and collapse like a house of cards.
Williams was accustomed to Bandoola’s grasp of physics, but Dawson, who had worked with many other elephants, was astounded. As it would turn out, Dawson was not as careful with timber as Bandoola had been. Later, like many foresters, he came to an unfortunate end. His forearm was “flattened to pulp” in an avalanche he had set off with dynamite. He begged his helper to cut off his arm. The reluctant man sawed at the flesh, but failed to amputate. By the time Dawson was taken to a hospital, gangrene had set in and he died. He left behind two Burmese wives who were twin sisters.
9 using their bodies as supports This has been seen often and is described by Katy Payne in Silent Thunder, p. 75. See also Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 72–73; Moss, Croze, and Lee, Amboseli Elephants, p. 123.
10 “Send for Poo Zone” EB, p. 224. While they waited for the elephants to arrive, Williams and the men worked hard to keep Bandoola’s thoughts here on Earth, trying to keep his spirit from wandering to another realm. In the amalgam of beliefs in Burma, it was thought that the soul took the form of an invisible butterfly, or leippya. In death, or even sometimes just in sleep, the winged spirit could leave the body and return to it or it could be captured and kept away. The men tickled the sick elephant, slapped him, and doused him with water in futile attempts to get him up. All the efforts were more torture than help.
11 He began to clear away Scigliano, Love, War, and Circuses, pp. 16–17. It might seem comical, but this sort of act could have proved deadly as it would years later for a German zookeeper. The man was trying to help a constipated bull elephant. But the animal expelled an enormous wave of diarrhea just as the keeper was administering an enema. The avalanche of waste knocked the man down, and he was suffocated by the subsequent output.
12 venom stronger than James, Snake Charmer, pp. 116, 145.
13 By summer Although Susan says Jeremy was born in England, Treve says he was born in Burma, and, in fact, this would square with when she says she was pregnant and when her passport shows her going home to England.
14 He had not been bitten J. H. Williams, “Second Story, Second Roll: Hydrophobia, etc.,” p. 23.
15 their nanny, Ma Kin Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, July 29, 2013.
16 at Colombo Susan Williams’s passport, stamped by Harbour Police, Colombo [Sri Lanka], November 12, 1934.
17 when tragedy struck Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 28, 2012.
18 “died quite suddenly” FOEB, p. 228.
19 He was buried Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 28, 2012; FOEB, p. 236.
20 It seemed the führer’s lesson David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: the American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945, Oxford History of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 383–94.
21 the couple returned to Burma T. Donald Carter, “The Mammals of the Vernay-Hopwood Chindwin Expedition, Northern Burma,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 82, no 4. Susan corresponded with Uncle Pop, who was still going strong. In fact, he was preparing to lead a large expedition from the American Museum of Natural History on a mammal-collecting trip in the far northern reaches of the country.
22 the Latin names To her, geraniums were Pelargonium x hortorum and the sunflowers, Helianthus annuus. Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, January 31, 2013.
23 Over the next year Ferrell, Twentieth Century, p. 187.
24 In April 1937 Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 62.
25 In the fall FOEB, p. 279.
26 on December 12, 1937 Handwritten notation on Susan Williams’s passport: “Treve 12.12.37.”
27 Aung Net taught him Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, June 6, 2013.
28 In the spring of 1938 Ferrell, Twentieth Century, pp. 201–2. And Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, The Century (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 210.
29 received home leave Susan Williams’s passport and her handwritten timeline of their life in Burma, from the archives of Treve Williams. See also EB, p. 190.
30 Geoff Bostock lived The Bostocks’ daughter Susan was in school in England during the war. Correspondence between Evelyn Bostock (wife of Bombay Burmah manager Geoff Bostock) and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, between December 21, 1941, and March 25, 1942, from the family archives of John Bostock. See also Goodall, Exodus Burma: “in one of the most palatial private houses in Maymyo—Woodstock.”
31 “Mummy” and “Daddy” Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke via Skype, May 30, 2013.
32 Susan refused Ibid.
33 The Japanese had also landed Goodall, Exodus Burma: “on a beach in Malaya.”
34 nearly a thousand men Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 35.
35 But before Christmas Goodall, Exodus Burma.
1 And on January 20, 1942 Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 89.
2 thought it premature Goodall, Exodus Burma: “before it was too late,” “heavily criticised.”
3 The company would allow Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, February 6, 1942, from the family archives of John Bostock.
4 Horses and pets Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma, p. 22.
5 buried valuables in their gardens Goodall, Exodus Burma: “glass, silver and even antique furniture.”
6 transferred cash Ibid.
7 Jim grabbed a few essentials FOEB, pp. 291–92.
8 Burma was an objective Fowler, We Gave Our Today, pp. 63–64.
9 At one point Tim Harper, “The Second World War: Day 3: Global War: Japan’s Gigantic Gamble,” The Guardian, September 7, 2009.
10 For the most part Max Hastings, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. 59.
11 “Asia for the Asiatics” Goodall, Exodus Burma.
12 A large portion of the Karens Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, p. 210; Harper, “Second World War.”
13 Some in Burma Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 65.
14 About eighteen thousand Harper, “Second World War.”
15 some who had hoped Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 75.
16 A report at the time Hastings, Retribution, p. 86.
17 pregnant again FOEB, p. 291.
18 If Rangoon Goodall, Exodus Burma: “did not order”; FOEB, p. 295; Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, p. 91. The evacuees were completely isolated. Mail service was nearly shut down entirely. There was no way to communicate with their families back home in England or with their husbands in country—and they had good reason to worry for them: Two of the company’s forest officers would soon be killed in Japanese attacks. Burma was descending into chaos. On February 8, 1942, Governor-General Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith went on the wireless to say he was determined to hold Rangoon, though nonessential workers were advised to seek shelter outside the city. He did not order an evacuation.
19 would be invaluable Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 52.
20 one high court judge Mr. Justice Henry Benedict Linthwaite Braund (late of the Allahabad High Court), “The Manipur Road: What Has Been Achieved,” publication and date unknown.
21 Williams’s friend and boss “Evacuation Scheme,” fourteen-page report prepared by Geoff Bostock outlining possible routes and transportation and supply requirements for evacuating the wives and children of Bombay Burmah employees in 1942. From the family archives of John Bostock.
22 It was February 1942 EB, p. 194.
23 Tokyo was relentless Harper, “Second World War”; EB MS.
24 Williams and Bostock Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942, from the family archives of John Bostock; “Trekking from Burma: Women and Children Cross Mountains: Extracts from a Letter Written by the Daughter of a Former Birmingham Manufacturer Describing How She and Other Refugees Escaped from Burma,” March 18, 1942. Appears to have been written by Evelyn Bostock; from the family archives of John Bostock.
25 They left Mawlaik Ibid.
26 Behind the families Ibid.
27 The food stocks Ibid.
28 A pleasant feeling EB, p. 196.
29 women and children sought safety Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942.
30 On Monday, March 2, 1942 This date is provided by the diary account of an evacuee, Jose Johnson, whose story and diary entries are published by the BBC as part of their series, “WW2 People’s War: An Archive of World War Two Memories—Written by the Public, Gathered by the BBC,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/04/a3338804.shtml, accessed October 25, 2013.
31 The large outpost Goodall, Exodus Burma.
32 not just as an individual Alexander, Astonishing Elephant, p. 36. One man came upon a friend long after the man had been killed by an elephant. He mistook the victim for nothing more than a deer hide. When others began to “unfold” the remains, what seemed like strings turned out to be arms and legs. Three layers down was a face. A perfect image of the man’s profile, “but absolutely flat, no eyeball even, and that’s the first time we even knew what the thing was.”
33 were not eager to work The diary account of an evacuee, Jose Johnson, “WW2 People’s War.”
34 a little area to sleep in Goodall, Exodus Burma. Many travelers knew by now to scrape a hollow underneath where a hip would rest.
35 Rangoon fell to the Japanese “World Battlefronts: Bitter Blow,” Time magazine, March 9, 1942.
36 Without Rangoon “To the Offense!” The New York Times, March 8, 1942.
37 All told, about six hundred thousand Asad Latif, “Speaking for War’s Silent Victims,” The Straits Times (Singapore), November 7, 2004. In Burma Research Society, Burma Pamphlets No. 5, p. 1, the figure for refugees is half a million.
38 Only about fifty thousand were British Goodall, Exodus Burma.
39 Eighty thousand may have died Harper, “Second World War.”
40 “had sacrificed everything” “Elephant Bill Praises the Fighting Devons,” The Exmouth Journal, December 14, 1957.
41 no decent suspension “WW2 People’s War.” The March 9, 1942, diary account of evacuee Jose Johnson describes the road as “awful.”
42 two nights Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942.
43 with the rain Ibid.
1 After meeting up J. H. Williams’s two brothers had met the women in Calcutta and helped them with housing; Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942.
2 Mrs. Robertson Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke via Skype, May 30, 2013; email from Treve Williams, November 7, 2012.
3 with its posh British club Janice Pariat, “Why Shillong Flips for WWII Jeeps: The Second World War Years Linger in This Hill Town in Strange Ways, and None More Unusual Than in Its Abiding Fondness for Willys Jeeps,” Open Magazine, April 16, 2011, http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/arts-letters/why-shillong-flips-for-wwii-jeeps, accessed October 17, 2013.
4 a cook and a butler Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke via Skype, May 30, 2013.
5 running the camp Evelyn Bostock to Mr. and Mrs. G. R. Gaunt, March 25, 1942; FOEB, p. 329. Susan says they ran the camp for six weeks, but this is impossible since J. H. Williams evacuated Burma on April 9, according to EB, p. 204.
6 The British Army soldiers Goodall, Exodus Burma; Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the War with Japan (London: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 110, 111.
7 Williams searched Conversation with Treve Williams, June 13, 2012.
8 by war’s end McLynn, Burma Campaign, p. 1.
9 The organization of the defense Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 63.
10 The Royal Air Force McLynn, Burma Campaign, p. 30.
11 Mandalay was bombed Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 77.
12 Newspapers in India Goodall, Exodus Burma.
13 only one survived Ibid.
14 several survival tricks Ibid.
15 “baring the ribs” “Battle of Asia: Before the Monsoons,” Time magazine, March 30, 1942.
16 Stilwell said “Flight from Burma: Stilwell Leads Way Through Jungle to India,” Life magazine, August 10, 1942. (Stilwell was in Imphal on May 24, 1942.)
17 a few defeats Harper, “Second World War.”
18 Susan gave birth Susan’s passport; FOEB, p. 330.
19 “gnawing ache” EB MS, p. 123.
20 the largest Commonwealth army Fowler, We Gave Our Today, pp. 5–6.
21 field of operation “How Admin Troops Backed-up the Fighting Men,” Burma Star Association, http://www.burmastar.org.uk/admin_troops.htm, accessed October 17, 2013.
22 Fighting with them James Delingpole, “Our Heroes of Burma,” Mail on Sunday (London), April 19, 2009.
23 could be dicey Ronald Lewin, Slim the Standardbearer (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1999), p. 105. Originally published in 1976.
24 Williams was assigned Major R. M. Forrester, OC Burma section, “Appendix B, Appreciation for SOE Operations in Burma, 26 August 1943,” Burma Consolidated Reports 1941–1945; Rev. John Croft, MC, “Gentlemen—‘The Elephants,’ ” The Army Quarterly and Defence Journal 13 (April 1983): pp. 192–98; Patrick Howarth, Undercover: The Men and Women of the SOE (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 11. Originally published in 1980.
25 didn’t play by the rules Howarth, Undercover, p. 11.
26 telegraph office Goodall, Exodus Burma.
27 beneath the weight The Calcutta Statesman, July 14, 1943; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, p. 252.
28 The first “hire” Harold Langford Browne’s partial war record in the National Archives, London. TNA Ref.: WO374/74943 and WO373/82.
29 Like the great tusker Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” p. 148.
30 “Bandoola was presented to me” Williams, Bandoola, p. 240.
1 more than three dozen elephants “Elephants Do Their Bit Against Japs” looks like a wire service story about J. H. Williams written in the early 1940s. From the archives of Treve Williams.
2 forty miles EB MS, p. 125.
3 the uzis’ wives Ibid., p. 125. “It was a remarkable get away by night,” Williams wrote, “as these riders with their families were taking the gravest of risks in crossing the jungles of the Teelaung Creek as much the Japs’ no man’s land for patrols as ours.”
4 to escort uzis and elephants Kahn, “Elephant Bill’s Elephants,” p. 105.
5 “That they stayed” Slim, “Uncommon Adventure.”
6 full of mischief Email from Treve Williams, November 7, 2012. The nanny, Naw Lah, would sometimes spank him with her hairbrush, the “prickly” side being as painful as the flat side.
7 “a big-headed Scot” “British Raid Burma,” Life magazine, June 28, 1943.
8 greet visitors naked Annette Kobak, “The Naked General,” The New York Times, January 16, 2000.
9 stabbing himself in the neck Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 93.
10 illuminated map EB MS, p. 133.
11 On the ground “Battle of Asia: Before the Monsoons,” Time magazine, March 30, 1942.
12 report from the Daily Mail “Elephant Bill Won His War,” Daily Mail, no date. From the archives of Treve Williams.
13 plenty of enemy troops Tillman Durdin, “Patrols Clashes Mark Burma War: … Main Defenses of Enemy Are Believed Behind Chindwin and Irrawaddy Rivers,” The New York Times, December 14, 1943. “The Japanese still hold several points on the west side of the Chindwin,” The New York Times reported. “They have dug in in the usual fashion with bunkers and machine-gun nests, supported by tree-sitting snipers near trails and open spaces.”
14 no one stepped forward J. H. Williams, “The Story of a Hard-Boiled Jungle Adventurer: Elephant Bill,” The Sydney Morning Herald, June 8, 1950. Serialized version of Elephant Bill with a number of differences.
15 constant clashes Durdin, “Patrols Clashes Mark Burma War.” “The uninterrupted harassing warfare going on between Allied and Japanese troops on the India-Burma border is being waged along a jagged, discontinuous ‘front’ of jungle-covered mountains and valleys stretching 500 miles.”
16 The toll of those killed Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 90.
17 “formidable fighting insect” Hastings, Retribution, p. 49.
18 traveled as lightly as possible Associated Press, “British in 3-Month Burma Foray Learn How to Raise Havoc with Foe,” The New York Times, May 21, 1943.
19 “an expensive failure” Kobak, “Naked General.”
20 a letter of gratitude R. A. Savory, HQ 23 Ind Div., to J. H. Williams, June 12, 1943, from the archives of Treve Williams.
1 mail from Susan Conversation with Treve Williams, December 3, 2012.
2 high jinks Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke via Skype, May 30, 2013.
3 supplies of quinine Joyce Chapman, The Indian National Army and Japan (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1971), p. 155.
4 A visiting reporter T. L. Goodman, “Elephant Bill Commands a Strong Company of Bridge Builders in Burma,” The Sydney Morning Herald, November 28, 1944.
5 Imphal, despite its status McLynn, Burma Campaign, p. 294.
6 Here, the reporters found Philip Wynter, “Guerilla Tactics in Burma: Traps and Elephants Used Against Japs,” The Argus, November 25, 1943.
7 the enemy was so close EB, p. 238. As Williams had put it, “Most of the time there was nothing between us and the Japanese but dripping jungle.”
8 A form of guerilla warfare Wynter, “Guerilla Tactics in Burma.”
9 After the rains Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p 60.
10 They suffered from David W. Tschanz, “Uncommon Misery: The 1944–45 Burma Campaign,” Burma Star Association, http://www.burmastar.org.uk/misery.htm, accessed October 21, 2013.
11 called “yaws” Mark F. Wiser, “Plasmodium Species Infecting Humans,” Tulane University, http://www.tulane.edu/~wiser/protozoology/notes/pl_sp.html, accessed October 21, 2013.
12 most of all malaria The Burma Star Association is a collection of information on the war in Burma, including personal memoirs of soldiers. This quote is from Manny Curtis, South Lancashire Regiment, http://www.burmastar.org.uk/mannycurtis.htm, accessed October 21, 2013. One British soldier remembered being hit by the deadly strain of malaria, p. falciparum, then known as malignant tertian. “Near the banks of the Irrawaddy, I had the great ‘pleasure’ of developing the next worse strain of malaria—MT. I’d already plodded on through a bout of denghi [sic] fever, but in spite of my daily dose of Mepacrin which was meant to protect us from the dreaded mosquito, I still managed to find a mozzie that hadn’t read the label. I’d also had foot rot (who hadn’t?), prickly heat, jungle sores, sand fly fever and dysentery. But MT malaria was something apart.”
13 During a particularly bad spell Tschanz, “Uncommon Misery: The 1944–45 Burma Campaign.”
14 pants cut away Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 110.
15 longest campaign Ibid., p. xvii.
16 they owned the skies Harper, “The Second World War.”
17 they hated the land Hastings, Retribution, p. 67.
18 American K ration Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p 59.
19 Among the Japanese generals Ibid., p. 52.
20 The engineers had gone Goodman, “Elephant Bill Commands a Strong Company,” p. 2.
21 He was furious once Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke and Treve Williams via Skype, June 6, 2013.
22 The pay scale war J. H. Williams’s army records, National Archives, London. TNA Ref.: W0203-1020, Folio 3B-10A. Provided by Denis Segal.
23 Then he treated them EB, p. 290; email with Treve Williams: “M&B powder was correctly named M&B 693 and contained a sulphonamide in this case Sulphapyridine. The name M&B presumably came from its maker May & Baker.” See also Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfapyridine, accessed October 21, 2013.
24 create a sick camp EB, p. 290. “To my belief,” he said, “it was the first field veterinary hospital for elephants ever to be established.”
25 Time magazine wrote “World Battlefronts: Temperamental Transport,” Time magazine, April 12, 1943.
26 An Australian newspaper Goodman, “Elephant Bill Commands a Strong Company of Bridge Builders in Burma,” p. 2. Also reported in “A Company of Elephants: A Unique Army Unit in Burma: Bridge Building,” from our special correspondent, Kabaw Valley, Burma, November 24 (delayed), no year, no page number. From the archives of Treve Williams.
27 “The elephant kneels” Wynter, “Life’s Reports: Elephants at War / In Burma.”
28 challenged and killed Document 1, p. 8.
29 “One forgave Bandoola” Ibid., p. 9.
30 looking for bags of salt Reg Foster, “Elephants Think—But They Forget,” SEAC Souvenir, April 19, 1945; EB, p. 299.
31 red elephant insignia Foster, “Elephants Think—But They Forget.”
32 Jim reveled Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke via Skype, May 30, 2013.
33 his father’s Jeep Email from Treve Williams, November 7, 2012.
34 kidney pie Email from Treve Williams, March 30, 2012.
35 the winning Allies Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 126.
1 Slim had anticipated David Atkins, The Forgotten Major: In the Siege of Imphal (Pulborough, UK: Toat, 1989), p. 78.
2 the Japanese were risking everything Hastings, Retribution, p. 67.
3 estimated the value “World Battlefronts: Temperamental Transport.” Five thousand rupees equals about $100 dollars in 1943, according to this website: http://www.likeforex.com/currency-converter/indian-rupee-inr_usd-us-dollar.htm/1943. Then go to the Measuring Worth website (http://www.measuringworth.com) and you can do the conversion to today’s value seven different ways, with results from $1,000 to $7,300. Or for all: $330,000. This squares with Foster, “Elephants Think—But They Forget.”
4 High command wanted “A Company of Elephants.”
5 five mountain ranges Maps provide by the National Geographic Society map librarian, May 18, 2011.
6 where Williams had stood Atkins, Forgotten Major, p. 78. There were constant unforeseen appearances by the Japanese all along the route. On March 28, 1944, “Suddenly, without warning at all,” one officer, Major David Atkins with the Fourteenth Army, wrote, he found the enemy just behind him at Milestone 105: “How they got there without being seen is quite extraordinary.”
7 Even Slim wondered Slim, “Uncommon Adventure.”
8 “most forsaken spots” Chapman, Indian National Army and Japan, p. 153.
9 trench mouth Conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, February 9, 2013.
10 He was on musth Document 1, p. 11.
11 like the little elephant boy Kipling, “Toomai of the Elephants,” p. 161.
12 “his musth glands” Document 1, p. 11.
13 Balladhun tea plantation Dave Lamont, “My Memories of a Wonderful Time in India,” Koi-Hai.com, http://www.koi-hai.com/Default.aspx?id=490718, accessed October 21, 2013. Details of the plantation filled in by one of the later managers.
14 a “strong” Japanese patrol Alan K. Lathrop, “The Employment of Chinese Nationalist Troops in the First Burma Campain,” The Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 2 (September 1981): p. 422; John Parratt, The Wounded Land (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2005), p. 88; EB MS, p. 164.
15 was captured and, they heard Atkins, Forgotten Major, p. 85; conversation with Treve Williams via Skype, July 29, 2013.
16 a withering sight In EB MS, p. 167, Williams says 300 to 400 feet high. In at least two other sources, he describes the cliff as 270 feet high: Document fragment 7B, and “Elephant Bill Says: They Are Tops for Intelligence,” Grimsby (UK) Evening Telegraph, November 4, 1954. In FOEB, p. 337, Susan Williams says “about three hundred feet high.”
17 Williams’s vertigo Conversation with Diana Williams Clarke and Treve Williams via Skype, June 6, 2013.
18 the Japanese had bound Fowler, We Gave Our Today, pp. 24, 42, 48, 49.
19 “It’s strange:” “A Living Hell in Burma,” Bristol (UK) Evening Post, June 28, 2005.
20 “We were not merciful” Fowler, We Gave Our Today, p. 68. Quoting from Second Lieutenant John Randle.
21 “They’d been slit” “A Living Hell in Burma.”
22 an astonishing 25 percent Andrew Roberts, “The Debt Japan Owes These Men,” Daily Mail, London, September 17, 1993.
1 “All will be well” FOEB, p. 338. Susan’s version of what Po Toke says differs from J.H.’s. His own writing changes between the original manuscript for EB, p. 169, and the published version, pp. 272–73. I’ve chosen to use Susan’s after consulting with Treve Williams.
2 Williams wore Email from Treve Williams, March 31, 2012.
3 taking a hammering Associated Press, “Allied Base in India Is Isolated; Foe Is at Last Trail to Imphal,” The New York Times, April 15, 1944: “Front dispatches said tonight that Japanese troops had reached the Bishenpur–Silchar Trail running southwest and west of the Allied Indian base of Imphal and suffered a dozen casualties in an engagement with Allied troops there.”
4 “Many were my thoughts” EB MS, p. 171.
5 pain in his stomach FOEB, p. 342.
6 Bandoola drew Ibid., pp. 338–39.
7 Bandoola’s great head EB MS, p. 171. Slightly different here from the book.
8 Here was nothing less Document 7b, p. 2. A pitch by J. H. Williams either for the book or screenplay: “The final height of the mountain range, when all seems hopeless, is crossed by Bandoola, justifying Williams’ life’s work.”
9 “This is the story” Slim, “Uncommon Adventure.”
10 On the big elephant’s back FOEB, pp. 339–41. And Document 1, p. 11.
11 It was April 26, 1944 In Elephant Bill, p. 283, J. H. Williams says the day after arrival is the twenty-fourth. But in later writing, Document 1, p. 11, he corrected the tally of days on the journey to twenty-one, which would have brought them to the tea estate on April 26, 1944.
12 The house was built Lamont, “My Memories of a Wonderful Time in India.”
13 “Faur are ye comin’ ” Ibid. Also squares with EB MS, p. 176.
14 After six weeks’ recuperation FOEB, p. 342; EB, p. 302. Susan and Jim often disagree in their writing over the timing of events. This is one of them. Susan tends to be more reliable on dates, and so I use hers here.
15 Without that bridge Croft, “Gentlemen—‘The Elephants,’ ” pp. 192–98; “Bailey Bridge Over Chindwin: Great Engineering Feat in Burma,” The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia), December 13, 1944; Brian Bond and Kyoichi Tachikawa, British and Japanese Military Leadership in the Far Eastern War 1941–1945 (Portland, Ore.: Frank Kass, 2004), p. 49.
16 For now Document 1, p.13.
17 his “religion” Document fragment 14, p. 4. Handwritten notes on the relationship between man and animals.
1 remote pockets of Burma Pointon, Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Limited, pp. 92–104.
2 Treve absolutely hated England Email from Treve Williams, November 7, 2012.
3 he did not speak of his distress FOEB, p. 350. Susan wrote, “I could not imagine Jim leaving the jungle and his elephants for good; they had been part of him for so long.”
4 Gone were Stanford, Far Ridges, pp. 18–19.
5 “in the sawdust ring” Document fragment 8a, the story of going to the Chipperfield Circus in 1950 or 1951 on a typewritten, single-page. The rest of the document is missing.
6 a long profile Williams said within twelve hours, his phone started ringing with calls from publishing houses, and within three days, he was signed on with Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. Document 25, typewritten speech by J. H. Williams prepared for the London Cornish Association. No date, though clearly the early 1950s. Covers writing and publication of EB, elephant intelligence, and movie interest in his story.
7 a contract “Tusk of Famous Elephant: Figures at Lecture at Penzance, Col. Williams & his Bandoola,” The Cornishman (UK), November 16, no year.
8 In the early fall of 1951 Document fragment 8, p. 1, typewritten story by J. H. Williams about trying to bring elephants to Borneo in the 1950s. See also Document fragment 8a.
9 Dick Chipperfield J. H. Williams, Big Charlie, p. 15.
10 “Having said goodbye” Document fragment 8, p. 1.
11 “I accepted with alacrity” J. H. Williams, Big Charlie, p. 15.
12 “Bandoola carried the brunt” Document 1, pp. 14–16.
13 Carved on a giant teak tree Document 7b, p. 2.
14 an American Document 21, letter from Richard E. Paulson, dated May 10, 1954. Letterhead: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SPECIAL TECHNICAL AND ECONOMIC MISSION TO BURMA, AMERICAN EMBASSY, RANGOON.
15 He was led to them J. H. Williams, Big Charlie, p. 17.
16 to rub its lining Document fragment 8, p. 1.
17 Williams tried his hand “Lieut.-Colonel J. H. Williams, ‘Elephant Bill,’ ” The Times, July 31, 1958. See also handwritten and typewritten reports on the trip to Ceylon by J. H. Williams, a proposed elephant census for the country, and letters to and from government officials for a proposed trip for 1958 and/or 1959, from the archives of Treve Williams.
18 purchasing five elephants Pugh, “Let Animals Teach You to Live.”
19 transporting a huge circus elephant Noel Whitcomb, “The Elephant Billy Couldn’t Forget! To Shift Him Will Cost £1,000-Plus,” Daily Mirror, June 8, 1952.
20 As he stood waving Emails from Treve Williams, August 1 and 2, 2012.