Flight By Elephant: The Untold Story of World War II’s Most Daring Jungle Rescue

In the summer of 1942, Gyles Mackrell, together with twenty elephants, and a team of mahouts (elephant riders) performed heroic rescue-missions in the hellish jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma.At the age of 53, Mackrell – a decorated First World War pilot, then overseeing tea plantations for a company called Steel Brothers – went into the ‘green hell’ of the Chaukan Pass on the border of North Burma and Assam. Here, in what became a three-phase mission, he rescued Indian army soldiers, together with British civilians and their Indian servants, from the pursuing Japanese, directing his elephants through jungle passes and over raging rivers, through territory previously un…