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Wojtek carried boxes that normally required four men, which he would stack onto a truck or other ammunition boxes. The bear mimicked the soldiers: when he saw the men lifting crates, he copied them. While this story generated controversy over its accuracy, at least one account exists of a British soldier recalling seeing a bear carrying crates of ammo. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek helped his unit to convey ammunition by carrying 100-pound (45 kg) crates of 25-pound artillery shells, never dropping any of them.

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Private Wojtek Ī standard 25-pounder ammunition crate, which held four shellsĪs an enlisted soldier with his own paybook, rank, and serial number, he lived with the other men in tents or in a special wooden crate, which was transported by truck. The cub grew up while on campaign, and by the time of the Battle of Monte Cassino he weighed 90 kilograms (14 st 200 lb). Wojtek had his own caregiver, assigned to look after him. Wojtek copied the other soldiers, drinking beer, smoking and even marching alongside them on his hind legs because he saw them do so. With the 22nd Company, he moved to Iraq, and then through Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. He became an attraction for soldiers and civilians alike, and soon became an unofficial mascot to all the units stationed nearby. He enjoyed wrestling with the soldiers and was taught to salute when greeted. He also slept with the other soldiers if they were ever cold at night. He later also enjoyed smoking (or eating) cigarettes, as well as drinking coffee in the mornings. He was subsequently given fruit, marmalade, honey, and syrup, and was often rewarded with beer, which became his favourite drink. Wojtek initially had problems swallowing and was fed condensed milk from an old vodka bottle. Wojtek play-wrestling with a Polish soldier The name Wojtek is the nickname, diminutive form, or hypocorism of ' Wojciech' (Happy Warrior), an old Slavic name still common in Poland. In August, the bear was donated to the 2nd Transport Company, which later became the 22nd Artillery Supply Company, and he was named Wojtek by the soldiers. She prompted Lieutenant Anatol Tarnowiecki to buy the young bear, which spent the next three months in a Polish refugee camp established near Tehran, principally under Irena's care.

One of the civilian refugees in their midst, eighteen-year-old Irena (Inka) Bokiewicz, the great-niece of General Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski, was very taken with the cub. At a railroad station in Hamadan, Iran, on 8 April 1942, Polish soldiers encountered a young Iranian boy who had found a bear cub whose mother had been shot by hunters. In the spring of 1942 the newly formed Anders' Army left the Soviet Union for Iran, accompanied by thousands of Polish civilians who had been deported to the Soviet Union following the 1939 Soviet invasion of eastern Poland.

After the war he was mustered out of the Polish Army and lived out the rest of his life at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, in Italy in 1944, Wojtek helped move crates of ammunition and became a celebrity with visiting Allied generals and statesmen. He accompanied the bulk of the II Corps to Italy, serving with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company. In order to provide for his rations and transportation, he was eventually enlisted officially as a soldier with the rank of private, and was subsequently promoted to corporal. Wojtek (1942 – 2 December 1963 Polish pronunciation: in English, sometimes spelled Voytek and pronounced as such) was a Syrian brown bear ( Ursus arctos syriacus) bought, as a young cub, at a railway station in Hamadan, Iran, by Polish II Corps soldiers who had been evacuated from the Soviet Union. 3522, 22nd Artillery Supply Company, II Corps (Poland)

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