Wartime heroics of 'Elephant Man' remembered
Source: Agencies |
November 3, 2010, Wednesday
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Print Edition
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BRITISH tea planter Gyles Mackrell organized one of the most remarkable rescue missions during World War II - by using elephants.
Now researchers have released new information that tells the full story of Mackrell's successful effort to evacuate hundreds of Burmese refugees stranded by a rain-swollen river.
This week, Britain's Cambridge University put online film shot by Mackrell which, together with his diaries, brings to life a feat that had faded from public memory.
The material explains how Mackrell, who spent most of his life working as a planter for a tea company in British India, came to the aid of masses of people desperate to escape Burma as the Japanese army advanced. Through his work he had access to elephants - the only safe way to cross the Dapha river at the Indian border.
Tens of thousands of refugees had trekked for hundreds of miles in the hope of reaching the Indian border. But by May 1942, those at the border were trapped by monsoons that had turned the Dapha into a torrent.
Mackrell's diaries show that he collected some elephants after receiving a call for help from a group of refugees on June 4, 1942. His party rode for 160 kilometers before reaching the river - only to find themselves helpless as they saw that fierce flood waters had trapped Burmese soldiers on river islands.
"On reaching the bank on a big tusker, I discovered a number of men on an island surrounded by high and very fierce water," Mackrell, aged 53 at the time, wrote in his diary. "I made several attempts to get over but it was utterly impossible." The footage shows Mackrell's elephants up to their eyes in water.
But next morning the waters calmed and Mackrell and his colleagues set up camp and helped 200 people across.
His exploits were reported in the British press at the time - Mackrell was dubbed "The Elephant Man" - but it wasn't until his family gave his archive to Cambridge University that the story could be told in full.
"Without Mackrell's help, hundreds of people wouldn't have made it," said Kevin Greenbank, an archivist at Cambridge's Center of South Asian Studies.
Now researchers have released new information that tells the full story of Mackrell's successful effort to evacuate hundreds of Burmese refugees stranded by a rain-swollen river.
This week, Britain's Cambridge University put online film shot by Mackrell which, together with his diaries, brings to life a feat that had faded from public memory.
The material explains how Mackrell, who spent most of his life working as a planter for a tea company in British India, came to the aid of masses of people desperate to escape Burma as the Japanese army advanced. Through his work he had access to elephants - the only safe way to cross the Dapha river at the Indian border.
Tens of thousands of refugees had trekked for hundreds of miles in the hope of reaching the Indian border. But by May 1942, those at the border were trapped by monsoons that had turned the Dapha into a torrent.
Mackrell's diaries show that he collected some elephants after receiving a call for help from a group of refugees on June 4, 1942. His party rode for 160 kilometers before reaching the river - only to find themselves helpless as they saw that fierce flood waters had trapped Burmese soldiers on river islands.
"On reaching the bank on a big tusker, I discovered a number of men on an island surrounded by high and very fierce water," Mackrell, aged 53 at the time, wrote in his diary. "I made several attempts to get over but it was utterly impossible." The footage shows Mackrell's elephants up to their eyes in water.
But next morning the waters calmed and Mackrell and his colleagues set up camp and helped 200 people across.
His exploits were reported in the British press at the time - Mackrell was dubbed "The Elephant Man" - but it wasn't until his family gave his archive to Cambridge University that the story could be told in full.
"Without Mackrell's help, hundreds of people wouldn't have made it," said Kevin Greenbank, an archivist at Cambridge's Center of South Asian Studies.
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