Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II

Williams embarks upon his survey of the Adaman Islands—once called “The Cannibal Islands” by Ptolemy—with “a crew of forty-eight hardened criminals” (167). While his colleagues are somewhat appalled at his choice to take along prisoners, Williams continues to feel, as he did in the case with Aung Kyaw, that giving these men a second chance would prove fruitful. While on his expedition, Williams begins to fret, doubting Susan’s love for him. He sends only a poem, found in a book called Jungle Tide, while he is away. Otherwise, he fears that he would be “making a fool” (169) of himself.

Tasked with assessing whether the islands could support the elephant workers’ foraging needs, Williams finds everything satisfactory. In fact, an elephant who had been exiled there is still alive, wandering through the thick forests. However, the other company man on the expedition conclude that “there were too many potential hazards in extracting [the wood] from the remote islands, which had no infrastructure in place” (169). Thus, Williams decides that the entire journey was “useless” (169), and he is disappointed that the prisoners will be returned to jail rather than made permanent workers. Nevertheless, he is happy to be back in Rangoon and ready to see Susan. He is met at the docks by He Man—his heart falls at the prospect that his rival might have won her—but He Man is only there to inform him Susan is running a day behind. Her telegram affirms her love for him, and they will go to England in a couple of months to marry and take an extended leave. The only hitch in Williams’s happiness is that Molly Mia died in an accident while he was away. True to form, Williams does not speak of it in his journals or memoirs.

Still, he has the elephants to comfort him before returning to England. He “raced to his up-country headquarters in Mawlaik,” which “was where he had spent most of his service as a young man, and further, it was Bandoola country” (172). He sets about getting everything in order for his temporary successor, Edward. In May of 1932, he and Susan set off on a new adventure: to England and into matrimony. Williams recalls, “I date this as the end of my being a young man” (173).

Williams and Susan are married in the fall of 1932, and by October, they are back in Burma. Williams is now responsible for the entire town and station at Mawlaik, and with his change in status, both in rank and in marriage, the couple is afforded a grand entourage as they tour the forests, checking in on the logging camps and elephants. They also are given a spacious home with all the comforts that could be found in a colonial outpost. Susan herself enjoys the forests and wildlife nearly as much as her husband. Williams is genuinely and completely happy: “This is what Jim had been dreaming of for a decade: his life among the elephants shared with his true love” (177). He tends to paperwork and inspections, while Susan “oversaw domestic tasks” (178). When reception is available, they listen to music or news from England in the evenings.

Susan enjoys the local people as much as the forest, and she becomes a nurse to Williams’s amateur doctor; there are no other options out in the jungle settlements. As the author notes, “[l]ife was too harsh in the forest for him to be reticent about treating the most horrifying diseases and wounds” (179). Mostly, though, there are pleasant discoveries, as when Susan meets Bandoola for the first time. She agrees with Williams that Bandoola is “a wonderful animal” and teases her husband that he is “quite paternal about him, aren’t you darling?” (182). Indeed, the Burmese workers, the indigenous communities, and—especially—the elephants are Williams’s family, and now he has Susan with whom to share all this.

Alas, “[t]he spell of their magical honeymoon was broken” on the last leg of their journey (184). One of Williams’s favorite assistants contracts typhoid fever, and though they try to get him to a hospital in time, he cannot be saved. Susan notes her husband’s deep depression over this unfortunate tragedy in her journal.

According to company policy, wives cannot travel with their husbands during the monsoon season. So, Williams travels to his camps for a month alone while Susan remains at their house in Mawlaik with one English-speaking servant. The heavy rains that year delay the mail delivery, but once Williams finally gets word from home, he receives some startling news: there is suspicion that the English-speaking servant is trying to poison Susan. Fortunately, Bandoola is available—along with the fastest young uzi in the crew—to speed back to headquarters as quickly as possible. Williams follows upon their heels as soon as he is able. He and Susan meet on the road coming into Mawlaik: she is fine as the message had reached her in time. In fact, she is better than fine: she is expecting her first child.

The servant is fired immediately, of course, and the incident allows Williams to restore Po Toke—who is still handling Bandoola—to his previous rank. It seems that all will be well for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, “[t]he larger world began to intrude immediately” (189). The Great Depression impacts the teak business, and companies are laying off workers and consolidating camps. The Williams family is relocated to a new district in Shwebo, and Jim is again separated from Bandoola. Worse, their new camp is shabby and depressing, marked by a graveyard filled with former English colonists who had succumbed to tropical diseases.

Before being relocated, though, Williams has the opportunity to repay Bandoola’s life-saving trek across the river for him. The massive elephant has taken ill and will not stand—elephants will often perish quickly if they do not stand, as their organs cannot take the pressure. It appears that Bandoola had broken into a storage of raw rice, siphoned up the lot of it, and then followed that by drinking gallons of water: the rice has swollen in his stomach and stopped his system from digesting. Williams attends to the elephant—“plunging my arm a dozen times [into the rectum] as far as the armpit” (193)—finally restarting digestion and restoring the elephant to health.

The disappointment with their new posting is followed by the joy of the birth of their son, Jeremy. However, that happiness is also short-lived. Williams takes ill with yet another round of malaria, then contracts dengue fever; he also fears he may have caught rabies from one of the dogs. His anxiety becomes all-consuming, and his health continues to fail. The family returns to England for “an urgent medical leave” (195). It takes months for him to heal, and as Susan notes in her journal, “[i]t was a psychiatrist in England [...] who eventually cured him” (195). Tragedy strikes again, though, as Jeremy succumbs to pneumonia. As will all the deeply tragic events in his life, Williams never speaks or writes of this loss.

Once Williams is healthy, he and Susan return to Burma in 1935, where she is reluctant to leave his side. Over the next couple of years, rumors of unrest in Europe and elsewhere begin to reach them. There are also changes to Burma’s status, as it becomes a territory independent of India, though still ruled by the British. Susan gives birth to another boy, Treve, in 1937. The couple dotes on him, and he becomes a true child of the forest. By 1938, war in Europe is all but inevitable, and Williams ponders returning to England to enlist. However, he ultimately decides that “with the war effort, ‘teak would be as important as steel’ and that’s how he could best serve” (198). The Williams family takes a break in Maymyo during the hot season, where “Susan felt, ‘the war seemed further away than ever’” (199).

However, such detachment from world events does not last. As they “prepared for what they did not know would be their last jungle tour” in 1941, the family returns to their “treasured routine” (200). That December, though, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, it becomes clear that the Williams family will not be able to avoid the war altogether. War is formally declared against Japan, and the Japanese begin to conduct air strikes on Rangoon. The family is ordered back to Mandalay at once, and they embark on the journey with trepidation, not knowing what lies ahead.