Private Wojtek: A response to a Post

Private Wojtek is perhaps one of the most beloved soldiers in Polish history. He was a soldier in the 22nd Artillery Supply Company from 1944 to 1947, was promoted to Corporal in 1944 before retiring to a quiet life in Scotland in 1947. He was also a 300-pound (136Kg for those of you with a reasonable brain) 6ft brown bear.

The post that I am referring to was written by a history blog called Damned Interesting and some of their content is just that. Although, it did have its flaws.

This topic was on a story that I had no idea happened whatsoever so my initial assessment was that it was properly thorough and well researched. After listening to the audio, I decided to do some research on it myself. I found that my initial assessment was actually correct and that the author left virtually nothing of great import out. The only things that the author left out that I feel should have been put in, just to add some more character to the beloved Wojtek was the impact his legacy had in media and entertainment, not just the memorial statues in Scotland and Poland. On Wikipedia, the list of references in media goes on: in 2014 British songwriter Katy Carr released a music video called “Wojtek” on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland; in the grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV you get an achievement called “Bearer of Artillery” if you play as Poland and fill out a list of requirements that are as tedious as playing a grand strategy game; in the board game Scythe the fictionalized Poland is represented by the characters Anna and Wojtek; Wojtek even went so far as to make an impression the Japanese culture, specifically in the anime series Girls und Panzer which features a Polish-inspired school whose emblem is the iconic bear carrying an artillery shell, which was the emblem of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, the company that cared for Wojtek. Wojtek was also used in the 2015 feature film of Girls und Panzer and was an amusement park ride. Finally, in the famous digital card game Gwent, originally featured in the critically acclaimed The Witcher Three: Wild Hunt, and based on the Polish book The Witcher, Wojtek is an audible voice line that references a bear summoned by one of the cards.

As entertaining and informative as the topic was, the writing style and the overall impact left a lot to be desired. The original blog post did its job as a history piece: it was well researched, formatted and structured, but as a blog post it generally failed to keep me interested. If it was not for the undeniably interesting, amusing and somewhat heartwarming topic, I doubt I would have kept listening to the audio, never mind reading the piece. And that is where the issue stems from, the piece was written more as a script for a podcast, not as a blog post. But even scripts for podcasts can have some modicum of flavor. I have written scripts of podcasts and audio work (absolutely shameless plug), and while not perfect, most of them were written in a more engaging way, if I do say so myself. If the two styles were combined and with a dash of more quirkiness, then the writing would have been much more interesting than it was.

Overall, while there are quite a few things I would change in the writing style the topic itself was definitely interesting and engaging and should be more widely known and there is absolutely nothing I would change.