Via The Story Behind
Purchased as a young cub from a railway station in Iran by a group of Polish soldiers during World War II , Wojtek was enlisted into the army as a private in order to be given rations and transportation. He was subsequently promoted to corporal and helped to move crates of ammunition during the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944 – swiftly becoming a celebrity among the Allied troops. After the war, Wojtek lived out the rest of his life at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, and was commemorated by a statue in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens that was erected in 2015.
