The setup
The men hadn't eaten well in months when they traded a knife, some canned beef, and a bit of chocolate for a bear cub in a burlap sack. It was 1942, in the mountains near Hamadan, Iran. The soldiers had only recently been let out of Soviet labor camps, part of a wartime deal that released Polish prisoners to fight with the Allies. For most of those men, the departure from their homes had happened in 1939 or 1940 and they did not return to the locations later. His mother had been shot by hunters. They had no plan for what came next. They took him anyway.
To feed him, the men filled a vodka bottle with condensed milk because that container was the only one available with a functional neck. He struggled to keep the milk down at first, but eventually it worked, and he started to grow. By the time he stopped growing, he stood as tall as a man on his hind legs and outweighed several soldiers put together. People who saw him for the first time needed a second to process what they were looking at. He drank beer. He ate lit cigarettes instead of smoking them, one puff and then the whole thing gone, which the men found funny rather than worrying. With the arrival of cold weather, he stayed inside the tents during the night. He wrestled with the men constantly and never hurt anyone, not once.
In 1944 the transport regulations prohibited animals when the military unit received instructions to travel to Italy. So they enlisted him. Rank of private, his own serial number, his own paybook, so the shipping rules couldn't touch him.
The twist
At Monte Cassino in May, the bear moved boxes of ammunition toward the artillery pieces. He copied the actions of the men as they carried heavy crates. There is disagreement regarding the specific contents of those containers. In some reports observers describe him as he carried live artillery shells during combat. As an example at least one British soldier stated that he saw the bear perform this action - but another report from the family of a soldier suggests that the crates were mostly empty or held shells that the men had already fired - this version suggests the bear acted for entertainment rather than utility. What everyone agrees on is that the company changed its insignia to a bear carrying a shell, and that he was promoted to corporal.
There is a story about the bear and a bathroom facility - since the military limited the use of water and the bear preferred cold showers, the soldiers forbade him from using the facility without supervision. On one occasion he found the door in an unlocked state and entered the room. He surprised a man who was hiding there - this man had entered the camp secretly to observe the location of the weapons. Due to his surprise, the intruder surrendered immediately. It is a story that people enjoy telling.
One veteran's daughter pushes back on the legend. She says her father told her the beer everyone talks about was often just water, because real beer was too precious to hand a bear. She says what he actually loved were dates, kept in a soldier's top pocket. He still ate the cigarettes, though. That part held up.
The outcome
When the war ended, the bear lived in Berwickshire, Scotland, with the members of his military group. In 1947 workers moved him to the Edinburgh Zoo. For many years men who served with him went to visit. If he heard individuals speaking Polish, he recognized the language and behaved in a friendly manner. One veteran's daughter says her father cried at the enclosure, something men of his generation were taught never to do. He died in 1963.
Since that time people have constructed monuments to him in Edinburgh, Kraków, Duns, Cassino, Poznań, Szczecin & Sopot. There is a film about him that was a candidate for an Academy Award. And a play exists based on a book for children. There's a bear carrying an artillery shell carved into monuments across two continents, and the men who actually knew him still can't agree on whether the shells were ever real.