Uncle Pachyderm

Prologue: To better comprehend the sad tale of Uncle Pachyderm, it would be well to understand the role he and hundreds of other elephants were forced to play during the battle between the Burmese and the Mongolians long ago. It is also essential to understand the dynamics of the politics leading up to this 1277 battle. A link to that article will be included at the end of this story.

My name is of no consequence as it was given to me by a human. I was one of those elephants used in one of your human wars. Can you imagine how frightening it is to have more than one human on your back urging you to move forward toward another human with a weapon, when your every instinct is to turn back? That is terrifying for us faithful pachyderms.

If we did not tote the humans on our back in the direction they wished to go, we were tortured. If we did head in the direction they wished to go, we often got hit with weapons from the opposing side. I suppose those humans were aiming at our humans; on the other hand, they might have been trying to cripple us pachyderms so our humans would be deprived of transportation and protection.

So there we were, an army of elephants with Burmese riding our back fighting a Mongol army of men riding the backs of horses. We had no thought of enmity with those poor horses. Poor horses! Poor us! The humans on our back would vibrationally transmit their hatred and fear and rage to us. I wanted so badly to be miles away from this place, rider-less and no longer forced to do what a man willed and directed.

I will try to help you picture what it is we saw and experienced. There seemed to be an endless supply of humans from Burma milling around. Your research indicated that there were 60,000. My elephant brain cannot fathom such large numbers. All I know is that everywhere I looked and smelled and heard and tasted, it was human after human after human all dressed in armor, all carrying swords and other weapons, many of them riding the backs of horses, yelling, talking, cursing, laughing, murmuring. There was chaos, chaos, chaos everywhere. There was no peace to be had. There was no place to retreat. There was no option of retreating. I was not only surrounded by humans, I had multiple humans riding my back.

If you had not researched this war, you would have immediately pictured one human riding on my back sitting behind another human riding my back sitting behind another human riding my back. You would not be able to picture many more than five humans able to fit on my back without the risk of falling off. But that is not how it happened. The Burmese Army had tied these huge wooden structures on top of the backs of each of us elephants. I heard some humans using the word tower to describe this structure. That must have been a very good description for with the added height of this structure and the additional height of 12 to 16 humans sitting inside this structure, we would have truly towered over most anything around. Of course, we were not as tall as old trees, but we were certainly as tall or taller than some of the young trees.

Can you imagine how weighted down I felt with the tower and the men and their armor and their weapons? I felt totally oppressed and trapped. I longed to just lay down to free myself of all of this. Better yet, I longed to run far, far away. But those men would prick my side with swords if I balked at all from fulfilling their desires for me to somehow carry that load on my back with enough energy reserves left over to move in any direction they wished me to go.

I could not look around to see what this structure looked like that was on top of my back loaded with men. But I knew what it must look like as everywhere I looked, there were dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds of elephants carrying the exact same load that I carried. It was enough to make my elephant heart fill with tears and sorrow and anger and tired resignation.

Once we were loaded, they lined us up, one elephant next to another next to another next to another. There was a seemingly endless line of us elephants standing side by side by side. Behind us were those 60,000 men, many riding horses, all carrying weapons.

So there we were, lined up and waiting. Then off in the distance, we saw clouds of dust coming in our direction. We heard the thunder of men riding horses. It looked like a huge wave of men on horses, carrying their weapons and wearing their armor. Your research indicated that there were 12,000 men from Mongolia, spewing hatred and fear and anger in our direction.

My immediate instinct was to retreat. I couldn't go backwards as there were those 60,000 men behind me with their horses and weapons. At least one of them would poke me with a spear or arrow or sword if I tried to back up. I couldn't go sideways as there were loaded-down elephants to the left of me and to the right of me. And naturally, I did not want to move forward toward those angry Mongol men, each one riding the back of a horse.

I have no concept of what we must have looked like to that Mongol army of men and horses. However, I got an idea that the horses must have been feeling the same way that I was feeling. Those horses balked. They neighed and whinnied in fear and anguish. The men on their backs tried to whip them into submission. The eyes of those horses were wide with terror. In spite of everything those men tried to do in their efforts to make the horses come toward the line of elephants, of which I was one, those horses turned and ran away. Their riders had no choice but to go with them. We pachyderms fervently hoped that would be the end of it. As for the men sitting in the tower on my back and in the towers on the backs of all those other elephants, they laughed in derision, full of scorn for the retreating Mongol army. I will give you a hint. Those men on our backs did not laugh for long.

Tragically, those Mongol riders got off of those horses, tied them to a bunch of trees, and then came after us elephants instead. They shot at us with arrows. These arrows were horrible. They were tipped with metal. These arrows pierced our hides. It was the most painful thing I had ever felt in my life.

I was terrified! All of us elephants were terrified! We elephants started pushing to turn around and to back up to escape those metal-tipped arrows. We trumpeted our fear. We knocked into each other. We ran over many of those 60,000 men behind us with their horses. Those wooden towers on our back slipped sideways, hurling the men inside those towers to the ground. Like I hinted before, those men no longer felt like laughing. They were now crying out in fear and anguish and in some cases, death moans. All I could sense everywhere was fear and terror and anguish. It just made me more determined than ever to run and escape. Once we elephants reached the trees, what was left of every one of those towers fell off or got knocked off or was broken to pieces.

Many men were killed that day. Many elephants were also killed. As for me, I died a slow, torturous death. The men from both armies stabbed me with arrows and swords. The men from my army did it in revenge because I ran away. The men from the Mongol army did it to incapacitate the Burmese army. I remember lying there surrounded by some other dying elephants, panting from thirst, perishing of heat and hunger and anguish, oozing blood from my many wounds.

The sun set and I was still alive. The sun rose the next morning and I was less alive. As the sun set at the end of that day, I willed myself to hurry up and die. By the time the moon was high in the sky, I was indeed dead. Or at least, my elephant body was dead.

As for my elephant spirit, that is a tale for next time.

To be continued . . .

To further understand the dynamics of what the men and horses and elephants experienced, read my article called The 1277 Battle Between King Narathihapato of Burma and the Mongolian Kublai Khan at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1936958/the_1277_battle_between_king_narathihapato.html?cat=37

Resources:

Mongol invasion of Burma at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Burma

Great Mongol victories! at http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t109307.html

Battle of Ngasaunggyan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ngasaunggyan

The Mongols in South-East Asia at http://medieval2.heavengames.com/m2tw/history/events/mongol_invasion_seasia/index.shtml

Battles & maps at http://home.tiscali.nl/~t543201/web-mongol/mongol-battles.htm

Fighting Techniques of the Oriental World AD 1200-1860 at http://www.militarymodelling.com/news/article.asp?a=4160

The Mongols, A History by Jeremiah Curtin, copyright 1908 at http://www.archive.org/stream/mongolshistory00curtuoft/mongolshistory00curtuoft_djvu.txt

Pagan Kingdom at http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pagan_Kingdom