The bear who went to war

A NEW film is being developed by Ian Harvey about Wojtek ( above), a brown bear recruited into the Polish army during World War II.

A Bear Named Wojtek will be a 30-minute, hand-drawn animation.

Purchased as a young cub from a railway station in Iran by a group of Polish soldiers, 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, and was commemorated by a statue in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens that was erected in 2015.

“It’s fantastic to have a piece of magic that’s real,” Harvey said, adding that he believed the story was “pure fantasy” when it was first told to him by filmmaker Iain Gardner.

Producers have already secured Polish funding, and are currently seeking a British partner, with the BBC, Channel 4, and Netflix all possible options.

It is expected that a team of around 30 animators will work on the project for up to a year, with each scene being hand-drawn on a computer tablet.

Its release is set to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day on May 8, 2020. – The Independent