An Ode to Voytek: The Most Badass Soldier in WWII
by Robert Brockway
I’m not quite comedically inept enough to make Polack jokes, but if I was, I would apologize for every single one right now. Recently, the Polish have rallied around a cause: To have a memorial built in Great Britain that honors one of their most beloved war heroes, a soldier simply known as “Voytek.” He was a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-fighting son-of-a-bitch who won his valor in the battle of Monte Cassino, one of the bloodiest conflicts of WWII. Voytek stood about 6’5 tall, and weighed in around 600lbs, which wo-wait,
600 pounds?! Either this Polish war-hero was also undisputed King of the Fatties, or he’s some sort of fucking bear.
Oh, wait, he
was a fucking bear!
Voytek was an Iranian Honey Bear, as well as a credited, ranked, and official member of the Second Polish Transport Company. He was found in the hills of Iran when the company, upon seeing a malnourished, starving bear cub, not only found the heart to nurse him back to health but then, eventually finding themselves with a full-grown, loyal, trained bear and a shitload of Nazis to fight, did the perfectly logical thing and decided to enlist him. I would normally comment here about the sheer insanity of the era's military for allowing a bear into the armed forces, but honestly? It makes perfect sense.
The Nazis knew all about the power of image, (their emblems and uniforms stand to this day as the epitome of tyranny and evil,) so when it came time to fight fire with fire, what better way to counter the powerful symbolism of the Axis, than a
god damn drunken bear in an Allied uniform? If, upon leaping into the trenches prepared for a brutal hand to hand fight, a Nazi soldier found it filled with bloodthirsty bears slamming whiskey - their immense paws filled with gargantuan artillery shells - you can safely count that soldier out of the rest of war. Even if he survives, he’s not fighting again.
“Sir, I’ve seen the enemy gunners. They’re bears!”
“You mean they fight like mighty bears!? My God!”
“No, sir! They’re literally fucking bears! I just went crazy as hell! I’m going home!”
“
Weinerschnitzel!”
On duty, Voytek was trained to carry cases of ammunition and mortar shells down the line to waiting artillery, each one weighing hundreds of pounds. On one occasion, he wandered into an empty shower stall and surprised an Arabic spy who had been listening in on top secret information. The spy quickly surrendered and immediately confessed to all of his crimes, probably because he was smart enough to realize that any military unit possessing Anti-Espionage Bears are likely going to be on the winning side of the war.
When off duty, Voytek enjoyed the same luxuries as any other WWII era soldier. He drank cases of beer, smoked cases of cigarettes, and loved to wrestle with his fellow troops - a fact which leaves me in somewhat of a quandary: Who was more badass, the Nazi-fighting bear who wrestled full platoons of trained soldiers, or the men who routinely got body-slammed by him for shits ‘n giggles?
Voytek was so fearless in battle, and so beloved out of it, that the Second Polish Transport Company officially changed their insignia to this:
All military insignia are pretty uniformly badass. Their imagery is rife with skulls, guns, bombs, and lightning bolts; but all that shit’s got nothing on this simple, modest, and entirely accurate depiction of what appears to be a grizzly bear with bullets for fists.
After the war, Voytek retired to the Edinburgh zoo, and the rest of his company settled in the area around him. They visited him frequently, tossing him cigarettes and beer over the fence, and occasionally jumping the barricades to wrestle with him again. He lived to a relatively old age, eventually dying of natural causes, and I’m sure that he’s up there somewhere right now, drinking a case of whiskey, smoking a cigar, and eating Nazis in heaven.
