This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

Private Wojtec's right to bear arms by Erica Nesvold.

During World War II, tens of thousands of Polish soldiers fought to defend and recover their war-ravaged

homeland.

Their sacrifices are still remembered in Poland, especially the contributions of one particularly

her suit soldier.

The fearless and loyal private Wojtek traveled with the Polish army from the mountains

of Iran to the battlegrounds of Europe,

helping his brothers in arms achieve a costly but vital Allied victory in Italy.

He never set foot on Polish soil during his lifetime.

Yet statues honoring Wojtec stand in Poland today,

despite the fact that the warrior they honor was neither Polish nor human.

Private Wojtek was a 500-pound brown bear.

In the spring of 1942, a group of weary Polish soldiers and civilians were making their way across the mountains

of Persia in what is now Iran.

The previous few years had not been easy on them.

First, the Soviets had invaded and annexed the eastern half of their country, while

Hitler's Germany gobbled up the West. Hundreds of thousands of Polish nationals,

including entire families of men, women, and children, had been rounded up and shipped off to labor

camps in Siberia. But when the tides of war turned against the USSR, the Polish government in exile

negotiated the formation of a Polish army on Soviet soil under the

...