ELEPHANT SOLDIERS IN INDIA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3463, 31 March 1930, Page 7

ELEPHANT SOLDIERS IN INDIA.

Her own legs were* good enough for Sylvia. She didn’t hold with such newfangled notions as railroads. But she said nothing about it. She waited until it was time to act; and then she acted in no uncertain manner. When she was put in the truck on the Indian railroad. Captain Graham Archibald Hope tells us in The American Boy and ’Louth’s Companion, slie : , picked up her attendant with her trunk —for Sylvia was an elephant—and put him outside, out of harm’s way. Then, ‘‘without any noticeable sign of anger, and without hurry or effort, she smashed the truck to match wood and scrap iron, and steped out of the ruins!) The railroad company made two more trucKs, especially for her. But Sylvia preferred travelling on her own feet, and in the game of railroad company versus Sylvia, Sylvia won.” Captain Mope writes entertainingly of his experiences, with elepnants in the Indian army. The captain, we read, served with a battery of elephant drawn artillery 30 years ago, before these great beasts were given their honorable discharges from such service. Continuing the account: During that service I learned that Hathi, as we call her in India, was in some ways a terrible soldier. 1 say “her”, because we used only cow elephants. Bulls, though highly ornamental, are far too uncertain of temper to be used for draft. Goodness knows, the cow can he troublesome enough on occasions. By far the queerest fact about elephants is that the great majority never saw a man, except to run away from him, tin they were full grown. Yet, in? spite of being one of the shyest of animals in the wild, Hathi needs no more than a year’s gentling and training to become a peaceful, hard working friend of man. But temperamental. While a cow elephant is ordinarily more gentle even than a. horse, she resents being fooled with, and when the fooling passes beyond what she considers bearable hounds, the result is apt to he startling! The story of Sylvia and the truck is told in support of this. Then we advance to other details: A team of artillery elephants, two of them harnessed tandem, make nothing on ordinary ground of the five ton loads behind them. Bu)t when there’s danger of coming under fire, we invariably have to substitute eight oxen for two elephants. Elephants are most subject to panic when they think they are in danger, and of nothing are they so afraid as of the singing of bullets, unless it be a small dog, or worse still, a mouse. I>, have been under lire with them once, thanks to some native infantry recruits, who were missing the small mountain which served as the butt for their rifle practise. Luckily, we were able to hustle out of the danger zone before the elephants took fright. Another battery, at Mooltan in the Bunjab. not many years before, was not an lucky. There were six-gun carriages and limbers in this battery. The mahout sitting on the neck of the flank elephant said that a hornet or a bee buzzing past him, started the trouble. But il it had been a hornet or bee, the elephant would have done no more than squirt some dust at it to drive it away. More probably it was a bullet, gone astray from the range. Whatever it was, it set the flank elephant off, and ii one elephant of a hunch gets scared enohgh to holt, the rest will follow him. The result was a helter-skelter stampede. The white gunners on the limbers tumbled off at once, but the mahouts stuck to their places bravely. Isy the time they regained control, six or eight miles further on, there was nothing left for the elephants to pull—everything smashable in the six-guu carriages and limbers had been scattered over the landscape. But normally, cow elephants behave very well, and enjoy using their strength. To see them at their best you must watch them getting the guns up some of the rocky buttes of southern India, up slopes that make you dismount and wish you had as many legs as your horse. Literally, they get down to their job, for if the slope is very bad, they crawl up on their bellies. And they always get the guns up. i never knew an elephant that was a quitter. One hears a lot about elephants’ memories, and not without reason. To me. at least, their long memories and their great capacity for friendship are proven facts, Take the new elephant that joined the battery. Pntil her first day on parade, she couldn’t possibly have seen any of the other animals. But after parade, as soon as the elephants had been stripped, she and an old battery elephant, who had well over twenty vears of service, made a dash at each oilier, twined their trunks, thumped and humped each other, and gurgled ami squeaked as elephants do when they are specially pleased with life. Finally, they lumbered off to the water trough, holding trunks, and, chattel mg nineteen In the dozen. If. as the mahouts said, they were old friends, their friendship must 1 have dated from jungle days. The new elo--1 ■ ii-int had been captured less than three years previously, and had never been near the battery till that dav. After twenty years,,.they had recognised each other at once, and were .delighted to meet again. After all, twenty years is not a great slice out or an elephant's life, which runs to well over a hundred. There was an eepliant in our battery known to have been in captivity for seventy years, who showed no sign whatever of lading strength!

Elephants “show good souse avliou they aro under medical treatment, {’aptain Mope assurer us, proceeding. Hath! usually has wit enough to know that the doctor is working to relieve pain or discomfort, and thoreloie she Js the host patient possible. A certain ,1 umho in the London Zoo had an appalling abscess on the jaw, which had to The first, which made him scream with pain and holt away, was not sufficient. The surgeon, seeing ,1 umbo’s panic, was doubtful and verv nervous about making a second incision. The keeper, however, knew better, and after petting and talking a while to his charge, ho told him to conic back. .Jumbo came, though he was trembling all over with Ir'ar. and of his own accord he put his head down within reach and allowed the cut to be made.

When hot weather comes, you give elephants some cooling medicine, done up in a pill camouflaged with sugar and things she likes. Though she takes in the sweet tiling easily, she spots the medicine as soon as she Idles it, and seeing no reason lor eating something very nasty, she spits it out. No amount of persuasion will make her open her mouth gain to take it in. At fast two men force the protesting elephants month open, while a third rams in the pill, Hathi owns herself heat, and. to judge hv the movements of her tliLgllL,

takes up some dust, turns her head back, and blows it on her flank to discourage the flies, and then turns her back again, as innocent as you please. But mahouts know even more than elephants, and one of them goes round to pick uji the pill that Hathi had stowed away in her cheek till she saw. £ chance of spitting it out again. This is too much for her. With a shriek of dismay she bolts, a mahout aft.gr her. Presently he leads her back by the ear. Her head is titled to one side and she’s yelling blue murder like a naughty child.

Now at lash she gives in, and, whimpering and protesting, she swallows he pill, opens her mouth wide to show that it has gonej and then pitches into her big flour cakes, as cheerfully as possible. The funny thing is that she never makes use of her strength. If she did, nothing short of a powerful locomotive could successfully oppose her. Yet the lean little brown man tugs her along much as he would a protesting youngster.

Hathi is very fond of being petted. You can’t take her on your lap and pet her. but you can tickle he» and scratch her under the chin and behind the ears, and talk to her as you would to any other animal. All the while she will show her pleasure by funny little squeaks, and by caressing you with her trunk. She can be playful too, but much as I like elephants,, I prefer to keep clear of playful ones. Their sense of humor is on too large a scale. (•

We had a ipiddle-aged Hathi in our battery who loved a joke as much as she did sugar-cane. She played one on me, one day, to tie great delight of the mahouts and her friends. In charge of four men, the 12 elephants had gone for an .afternoon’s romp in a lake, “a thing they greatly enjoyed,” we are "told a§_ we came to an example of this pranksomeness: When I was adding up to the lines in the evening I caught them on the way home. They all certainly felt good, especially the joke merchant, who had no man on her neck. When I was level with the herd, about 50 yards from it, she stopped, looked at me for a moment, and then cocked her ears and rolled up her trunk tight. Trumpeting like a wild bull elephant, she charged. We didn’t wait for her, my horse and I, but went off at a rate of knots. Of course she couldn’t catch us, and I don’t suppose she'wanted to. What she wanted to do—and did—was to scare us stiff and make us run. When I pulled ul) and looked round, 1 saw her capering about after the manner of her five-ton kind, waving her trunk and laughing to beat the band. Yes, laughing! An elephant laughs all right, with a sort of shrill, cackling squeak. Her pals, including the mahouts, were laughing, too. They laughed all the way home, and when I went to see the elephants fed, the joke merchant was still chuckling. Elephants can think for themselves, and even seem to have a rough code of conduct, ; s crows most certainly have. The biggi st elephant in the battery, Anarkully, was a bad bully. She had thrashed all her companions, except one, called Sooksoondry. She made a special victim of Zirra, a very small ek\hant, well under eight feet high. Managing to get loose one night, she went over to Zirra and began to hammer her without mercy.

Sooksoondry was the one I mentioned as having 70 years of service. She was not ’as tail as Anarkully, hut more heavily hui.lt, and the handsomest cowelephant I ever saw. Perhaps the strongest, too. If a tethered elephant really wants to get loose, she can generally manage it, and hearing Zirra’s laments, she got loose and went across to take a hand. She began by hutting Anarkully—the bully—fair ayd square in the ribs, knocking her endways. Then she cut loose, and, not giving Anarkully a chance to get up, she thrashed and kicked her into submission. After the thrashing she drove Anarkully back to her place. After that Anarkully let the other elephants alone. I might add that she was Sooksoondry’s leader, and as she would always shirk pulling if she could, it is quite likely tha tthey had had words before, which came to a head in this manner. Anyhow, poor little Zirra" who only stood about seven feet six inches, and must have weighed considerably under four tons, was forever after .left in peace. Good companions, and good workers —elephants—and though they proved useless under fire, 1 couldn’t help feeling a pang of regret when they got their discharge from the service.