It’s the most incredible war elephant tale since Hannibal.
The Untold Story of World War II’s Most Daring Jungle Rescue
by Andrew Martin
Harper Collins
During the height of World War II in Japanese-occupied Burma, Gyles Mackrell, a British World War I pilot turned tea planter, deployed 20 trained elephants to help save the lives of 200 refugees — a mostly unknown tale chronicled by journalist Andrew Martin in his new book “Flight by Elephant” (Harper Collins).
By mid-December 1941, Japanese soldiers had entered Burma and began fighting their way to the Burmese capitol, Rangoon. They killed a total of 2,000 people and disabled all escape routes via air or sea. The only way out for tens of thousands of refugees was to head for the safe zone of India via foot.
The route out was nicknamed “the Valley of Death,” a 300-mile trek through the Chaukan Pass, a steep swampland covered in sub-tropical jungle and dotted with raging rivers. The path was “either unmarked on most maps or dishearteningly stamped ‘unsurveyed,’ ” Martin writes.
Evacuees stormed out of the city, ill-prepared for such a harrowing trip. The British Army dropped supplies to the groups but could do little else to help with the escape.
Two British men nearly died of starvation on the route but, as luck would have it, encountered 53-year-old Mackrell, a decorated World War I fighter pilot who had moved to British India to oversee a tea plantation. Mackrell also happened to be a skilled elephant trainer.
And elephants happened to be natural guides through the dense and dangerous jungle. While a man can only carry 50 pounds of supplies, an elephant can hoist 600 pounds on his back. An elephant’s normal walking speed is 6 miles per hour (twice as fast as a man’s). They are also surprisingly adroit, despite their 4-ton frame, at climbing steep embankments often on their knees and at swimming in fast-flowing rivers.
In June 1942, Mackrell gathered 20 elephants and loaded them up with supplies like rice, tea, food, medical supplies, a portable bath, a bed and, of course whisky, rum, cigarettes and opium.
Of the 300 people tried to escape through Chaukan Pass, 260 lived, thanks to Mackrell, writes Martin.
Upon completing his mission, Mackrell received the George Medal for gallantry with the dedication: “To those whose lives he saved, he will always be known as the Elephant Man.”