During World War II in Burma there was a huge campaign going on to save Burma, called “The Burma Campaign.” This was Burma trying to keep their land from being taken over. One major part of this campaign was building a road to India, which would make getting materials from India to Burma and Refugees from Burma to India. The British and American Special Forces were a major part in the campaign. They organized elephants to carry supplies and rebuild build the Burma road. Without the thousands of elephants, there would not have been an accessible way to India because of the monsoons flooding every route.
Elephants were the only reliable way because of their strength and intelligence. There were two waves, one lead by General Stilwell, an american, who organized his troops to build the “Stilwell Road”, making a start to the road to India. The other led by James Howard William, a english man who is extremely educated in elephants, who got the elephants Burmese Teak Industry to evacuate the country, including english women and children and refugees. Williams also led the elephants to build bridges and re-build the Burma Road to get materials of war into Burma. Elephants were the only reasonable and accessible way to rescue the country of Burma, at the time of WWII, because of their power to carry materials that were unable to be carried by any human and for their tireless work.
The US Army helping build the Burma road, paved the way for the re-building of the Burma Road, allowing for some access India. In the Journal, “Blood, Sweat, and Toil Along the Burma Road,” the author, Donovan Webster, writes this interesting statement: “It became the job of General Stilwell to retake northern Burma, reopen the Burma Road, and build the Ledo Road 500 miles through mountainous jungle, connecting the Burma Road with India” This statement introduces that General Joseph Stilwell was incharge of beginning the rebuilding of the Burma road, starting off by building the Ledo Road, which soon will be connected to the Burma road.
He got a lot of road built, but man power of his troops would not last as long, the long hot days would get to them, causing them to need to find a more realistic to build a seven hundred mile long road. They kept building but were in desperate need of an alternate source of “energy” for the work. With the monsoon rains all the work they would do in a given day would be ruined, making this an impractical task. Later in the article, Webster expands on how big of a task building the road was, by calling it an “epic undertaking.” He also writes that the US troops had no choice to keep going, because they needed to get the road built.
In the interesting article in The New York Times, as they explain the effects the monsoon rains had on getting into India, introduces another reason why the troops needed a new way of building the road. In the article, when the author is giving an update on what is going on with General Stilwell’s troops, he writes this interesting passage: “As the monsoon rains end, Allied forces are commencing more active operations in the green and dripping Burmese jungles.” This passage shows that the monsoon rains have affected the progress of getting to I India tremendously. Later in the article, the author of the article, Hanson Baldwin, calls the operations “slow and difficult,” implying that they haven’t been able to work for a while, or at least not been able to get what they need to, done. There is no specific alternative way of building the road, but we do know later they will use elephants to carry all the materials and do the heavy lifting of the build.
There were thousands of elephant mortalities during the Burma Campaign, implying that the work the elephants had to do was extremely dangerous, but also informing that there could have been many more human mortalities if it weren’t for the elephants. In the book, The Burma Campaign, when the author is introducing all the elephants that were sacrificed, he says this: “At the start of the Burma war it was estimated that there were about 20,000 domestic elephants and 6,000 wild ones, though the wartime mortality of the domestic ones was terrific, and by the end of hostilities only 2,500 were left alive.” Seeing the number of elephants that dies is hard to think about, but thinking of the humans that could have died would have been tens of thousands more. The elephants were treated fairly, and not “broken,” which is how elephants were trained before; this is the reason the elephants were so successful at their job. In wars there is never glory for everyone, something’s always need to be risked, but what we choose to risk can save many more than it risks or vice versa. In this case, there were many risked but even more were saved.
In Vicki Croke’s novel The Elephant Company, some of James Howard Williams’, “Elephant Bill,” elephant company was getting captured by the Japanese, but they were going to get every elephant back from Japan, this provides another signal that the elephants were their only hope. When Croke is explaining the torture Japan gave to Williams and his elephants, she states this:
In part, they would conclude, it was a cocktail of harsh discipline, national fervor, religion, childhood education, a cultural embrace of obedience over individuality, and a demand for utter allegiance and bravery that was enforced with physical punishment. But to an Allied soldier in the field, it didn’t matter why. They simply never wanted to find themselves at the mercy of the Japanese.
Right after this, Croke explains “ditching the elephants wasn’t an option,” telling us that the elephants were extremely important for the campaign and that they can’t give up now. Also, they explain that they were motivated to get every elephant free, and not let them get tusked. The British troops never want to find themselves being defeated by Japan, so they will do anything in their abilities to win, which includes saving the elephants that have will eventually save tens of thousands of people.
In the article, “Elephants and Rocks” comparing “Elephant Bill’s” journey, to Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, introduces that the task of the elephants was not easy, and that elephants were not a new “machine” that is more powerful than man. When W. L. Carr, the author of the article, is explaining how the elephants broke up the earth to make the roads, he explains this:
“Once down there [at the foot of a precipice] she has to drag the log again with chains along a ledge which has been roughly blasted out of the hillside around a precipitous Such blasting is often done by a more primitive method than using dynamite. The rock is heated with a fierce brushwood fire and then cracked by pouring water over it. After rocks are broken again with crowbars and the big pieces disposed of by elephants.”
This method of heating up rock was the same method Hannibal used, according to Livy. A quote from Livy’s passage in mentioned in this article, in latin, the rough translation is this: “[Thus heating the crag with a small body of the hillsides with iron tools nolliuntque with the bends, the cattle, and the elephants, also can be drawn so as not to be able to.]” Both of these passages talk about narrow cliffs, and tight bends, which is assumed because both are going through mountains. The elephants in Hannibal’s crossing and William’s journey to India, the elephants are doing much of the work, carrying the supplies, and using their power to make paths through the mountain ranges. The elephants are moving the huge rocks, which otherwise would not have been possible without them.
