"The Last Elephant Charge in History? " Topic
9 Posts
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| Tango01 | 01 Aug 2014 9:55 p.m. PST |
"…In south-east Asia the last references come from the nineteenth century. The last reference, indeed, from anywhere in the world that Beachcombing has been able to find was a battle between the French and the Vietnamese in 1885, when French infantry fled before the beasts of the Nguyen Emperor. The elephants were only driven back with much effort by imperial rifles. The Siamese continued to use elephants till the end of the nineteenth century as canon carriers. But here we can no longer talk of ‘charges' as the elephants stood at a distance while artillery, mounted on their backs, was fired. Elephants, of course, were then used extensively in the twentieth century as beasts of burden in wars, most tragically perhaps in Vietnam, where US planes and helicopters killed columns of ‘red' elephants…"
Full article here
link Amicalement
Armand |
| Sobieski | 01 Aug 2014 10:01 p.m. PST |
The very idea of the Siamese undertaking something as vigourous and decisive as a "charge" is mildly comical to someone living in SE Asia and married to one of them. |
| Samurai Elb | 02 Aug 2014 2:15 a.m. PST |
I am not sure that this was the last elephant charge. I had one online source for an elephant charge of the Japanese on elephants against a british mule transport column during World War II in Burma. Unfortunately the
page called "K9" seems to have gone. I never find another source either online or in books. |
| bc1745 | 02 Aug 2014 3:51 a.m. PST |
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| nevals | 02 Aug 2014 6:48 a.m. PST |
bc1745,somewhere toward the bottom of that link: Nazi Elephants-hilarious! |
| Tango01 | 02 Aug 2014 10:18 a.m. PST |
Thanks for the link bc1745! Amicalement
Armand |
 Doctor X  | 02 Aug 2014 10:50 a.m. PST |
The last elephant charge I saw was when someone brought doughnuts to the IT department at work. |
| WillieB | 31 Aug 2014 4:07 p.m. PST |
The hopefully last elephant charge I saw was back in the seventies in Kenya. A bull either fell in love with our vehicle or decided it would make a nice toy.
Now elephants often make 'fake' charges but this was the real thing.
Thankfully we had a very experienced German driver (Jan) or I probably wouldn't be typing this.
That animal had no mahout, tower or whatever and believe me it didn't need it.
I simply can't understand how anyone could muster up enough courage to hold his ground when say a dozen of these pachyderms came charging towards you.
Oh, and BTW many of our party were armed with .458's, .460's .475's and slightly smaller .375's.
Noone, including myself, even thought of shooting at that animal. |
| Tango01 | 01 Sep 2014 10:43 p.m. PST |
Can you imagine hunting them in the XIX° Century? Amicalement
Armand |
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