This is a work of fiction, but the story of the elephant men rescuing refugees from Burma after the Fall of Rangoon in 1942 is true. Two men in particular stand out: J. H. Williams, author of Elephant Bill, a wonderful read, part natural history, part epic trek out of Burma, over the mountains, and Gyles Mackrell, whose film of his elephants braving raging waters to save desperate men has recently been put on YouTube by Cambridge University. The Jiffs failed. Burma was liberated from Japanese rule by the Fourteenth Army, but India, Pakistan and Burma got their independence from the British. Bose came to a sticky end, jumping from Japan to the Soviet Union at the end of the war, before being swallowed up in the Gulag lest he tell tales about the time when Stalin toasted the Nazis with champagne.
This book is dedicated to the memory of the refugees, including children very much like the ones imagined in this book, and to the bravery of the elephant men and their elephants, who did their best to save them.
John Sweeney, London, 2012