Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II

This is the practice by which wild elephants are ensnared and tamed for work in the logging industry. As an industry professional describes it:

‘[e]lephants in the wild are generally taken in traps known as keddahs, which may be several acres in extent and capable of capturing a whole herd at a time. [...] Once in the keddah, there is no escape, and trained elephants are then used for securing with ropes the animals thus caught’ (67).

This process routinely leaves significant scars on the elephants’ ankles and legs; they are sometimes terrorized with torches and gunfire to force them into submission. The Nobel-Prize-winning English author Rudyard Kipling observed elephants herded into these enclosures, “like boulders in a landslide” (67). Williams, for one, abhors the practice. After capture, the elephants wear large balls made of teak around their necks, called kalouks, to alert handlers to their presence.

Referring most often to the onset of the rainy period in tropical climates, the monsoon can bring torrential rains, unleash dangerous insects, and often facilitate fatal diseases. The logging industry is brought largely to a halt during the wet monsoons, though as Williams witnessed, the elephants “knew how to cope with monsoon. If [an elephant] tilted his head forward, his large, bony brow ridge would shield his eyes from rain, and he could keep water from spilling into his nostrils by hanging his trunk down straight” (5).