True story of tusk force behind 'Far Eastern Dunkirk'

Gyles Mackrell, a 53-year-old tea planter, saved 200 Burmese refugees from the banks of a flooded river using the only means he could think of to get them to safety – elephants.

Mackrell's rescue mission was followed by the press at the time, who nicknamed him the Elephant Man, but the events of June 1942 were soon consigned to history.

However, after donations of letters, diaries and amateur video footage of the rescue from Mackrell's niece, the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge is paying tribute to his bravery.

Researchers will examine the donated documents in detail, hoping to revive interest in the story of the Elephant Man.

The university will also release a short film of Mackrell's epic mission on its YouTube site.

Mackrell's operation, which has been called a "Far Eastern Dunkirk", saved the refugees from the advancing Japanese army, who had invaded in January 1942.

Thousands of evacuees, many of them wounded, sick and starving, had trekked for miles through the jungle, becoming trapped when a river flooded.

After receiving an SOS call Mackrell gathered the elephants, which he used in his work on the tea plantation, and set up camp on the river bank.

In the weeks that followed, his team brought hundreds of men, women and children to safety across the water on elephants.

Dr Kevin Greenbank, an archivist at the Centre of South Asian Studies, said: "Without the help of Mackrell and others like him, hundreds of people fleeing the Japanese advance would quite simply never have made it."

Mackrell, who worked at the Steel Brothers tea plantation in Assam, was awarded the George Medal in recognition of his rescue operation. He died in 1959 after retiring to Suffolk.