Chapter Seventeen -Everest 1922

George wrote from the Caledonia:
March 13, ‘22
I have just come from a run round the decks and am presently sitting languorously reading Virginia’s book, waiting for the breakfast bell to ring. You will recognise some of the characters in it, for they are disguised fairly thinly, and not terribly flatteringly, I think! You will have to tell me what Ka thinks when you’ve finished it.

This was Virginia’s Night and Day, which came out in 1919 – a ‘society’ novel, critical of much in the small, literary, artistic world of upper-middleclass London’s avant garde she knew so well. The complicated romance of Mary Datchet, Katharine Hilbery and Ralph Denham was so clearly that of Ka, Rupert, and Noel Olivier that George did well to wonder what Ka thought of it. This observation was enough to induce me to read it, reluctant as I was to give Virginia any quarter. But I found myself in sympathy, not so much with Mary’s suffragism, as with Katherine’s frustration at the world of men and their hold on the literary careers of women. ‘One finds them,’ Virginia wrote, ‘at the tops of professions, with letters after their names; they sit in luxurious public offices, with private secretaries attached to them; they write solid books in dark covers, issued by the presses of the two great universities, and when one of them dies the chances are that another of them writes his biography.’ Her commentary on relationships, another of the reasons George was interested that I read the book, I was less happy with; I found her conclusion, that without being attached to a man any woman, no matter how capable or independent, was incomplete – ‘nothing’ – very depressing. But while George argued later that it was not her conclusion at all, rather society’s, I was not so sure.

Of the members of the expedition with him, George Finch, Dr. Arthur Wakefield, Col. Edward Strutt, Noel, and Howard Somervell, he liked the last two best. A surgeon at University College Hospital in London, Somervell had taken a Double First in natural sciences at Cambridge before qualifying. He went out then to the War, serving as a Captain in the West Lancashire Casualty Clearing Station where he acquired much experience especially after the Somme, which dreadful experience must have been the impetus for his later missionary work. After the present expedition he went out to India, eschewing a prestigious post in London, and there he worked for forty years as a doctor. He was my own age, younger than any of the others on the team next to Geoffrey Bruce, of a durable, stocky build and possessed of exuberant energy and tremendous endurance; he would, as Teddy Norton said, ‘stand any amount of knocking about.’ In the previous summer in the Alps, he and Bentley Beetham, who was to be on the 1924 expedition, had made thirty-five summits in six weeks. Moreover, apart from his accomplishments in science and mountaineering he was a very fine painter in watercolour, oil and pastel, as well as an exquisite violinist, with a love of poetry and literature that endeared him to George; although this sensitivity did nothing to prevent Howard from giving his all to trounce George in deck tennis.
John Noel was an extraordinary character altogether. Like Teddy Norton, he exuded a warm and gentle magnetism that belied his magnificent toughness. Of the same age as Howard, he spent much of his childhood in the Alps, where he made guideless climbs of practically everything.
He went to Sandhurst, where he was recruited into the East Yorkshires, and sent to India. In 1913, at the age of twenty-three, he went absent without leave in disguise and made his famous attempt to reach Mt. Everest and make a reconnaissance. The beginning of the war, and the intercession of his kindly OC, who privately admitted that he admired Noel’s spirit, spared him a court-martial on his return from the three-month journey. He went over to France as one of the British Expeditionary Force, and was captured on the retreat from Mons in 1914, managing to escape and made his way back to the British lines. He was chosen for the expedition after the fiasco of the dull and turgid calibre of the1921 party was fully disclosed in a rather unabridged report George sent to the Committee. In person, he was something of an idealist and a mystic, though urbane, with a fund of clever and exciting stories from his travels, brilliant, inventive, and compassionate. He was impossible not to like.

Strutt George at first considered something of a dud. An old Army man and one of the ‘bag the summit’ sort of Alpinist, such a character had little to recommend itself to George, until Strutt told the story of how Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, had tried to have him court-martialled for insubordination, by which George concluded that he must be all right. He was General Bruce’s second in command and in charge of the camps along the march, and of the lower camps on the mountain.

Wakefield was a general practitioner from Westmorland. A Rock and Fell Club member and an adequate climber, he was a Trinity man, and gave up his medical practise in Canada to join the expedition as adjunct medical officer. He was meant to be party of the climbing team, and Charlie Bruce described him as ‘bursting with enthusiasm to join the expedition’. But with no high-altitude experience, at forty-six he really was too old to begin such endeavours, although he did get as far as the North Col to establish a medical base there.

George Finch, the oxygen officer, was known from previous seasons in the Alps. Poor old Finch! He really was the scapegoat for the Old Boys in the Alpine Club, who so disliked his personality much more than they disliked his oxygen equipment. Even George, while on shipboard finding his oxygen lectures and drills ‘immensely interesting’ got rather tired on him on the trek to Tibet and complained to more than one of his friends about developing a ‘Finch complex’. But George too had his ideological differences with the Alpine Club. He had always hated people who didn’t belong on mountains being on mountains, and the sudden worldwide interest in Everest really worried him that it would result in the demeaning of mountains, and mountaineering. He wrote:

We often hear of mountaineering expeditions on one or another of the most famous peaks in the world, and are told of conquests continually repeated in well-known centres, we come to know too well how accessible mountains are to skilful and even to unskilful climbers. However valuable a function it may have been of the Alpine Club in its infancy to propagate not only the gospel, but the knowledge of mountains, the time has come when it should be the principle aim of any such body not only to suppress the propagation of a gospel already too popular, but also to shelter its members against that superabundance of knowledge which must needs result from accumulating records. Hereafter of contemporary exploits the less we hear the better; our heritage of discovery among mountains is rich enough; too little remains to be discovered. The story of a new ascent should now be regarded as a corrupting communication calculated to promote the glory of Man, or perhaps only of individual men, at the expense of the mountains themselves.

I have a great difficulty, he wrote from Darjeeling, with the idea, let alone the reality, of personal fame with regard to climbing mountains. I hate it. That may sound disingenuous to more cynical or ambitious ears, but I know that you believe my sincerity. The benefit here of course is that the Bruces are so much more well-known to the locals that a mere mountaineer is passed over entirely, and I am happily anonymous. Does it sound selfish of me to wish the benefit of having climbed, or at least attempting to climb, Everest in terms of public regard to allow me to do what I wish while scoring the rather more irritating aspects of it? It is not the invasion of my privacy as a private citizen which I mind so much as the superficial nature of public regard; I could as easily be an interesting specimen in the London zoo, brought from our friend Finch’s native place. I am beset with the idea that all this is a mere fillip to their jaded existences; they will find another such specimen to fawn over momentarily, thus their interest is meaningless and shallow.

By ‘the Bruces’ he meant of course the General, Charles Granville Bruce of the Gurkhas – Younghusband’s old friend now leading the expedition ¬– and his cousin Geoffrey, the transport officer and interpreter. He was only twenty-six, and not properly a climber, although he would climb this year with Finch, setting a new world height record, not a bad go for a novice. Young Geoffrey was tall, of athletic build, strong, endowed with a great fund of mental energy – an invaluable asset –and cheerful in any situation. He also had something of his cousin’s irrepressible sense of humour and was given to practical jokes. The Bruces had been in Darjeeling from their respective posts since the first of March, and by the time the others had arrived, had sorted out the matter of the stores, so that the expedition could embark on the 26th, on time according to the General’s schedule.

John Morris was new also, and was Geoffrey’s second as transport officer. He too, was a Captain in the Gurkhas, and was later on the 1936 expedition to Everest with Smythe and Wyn Harris. Colin Crawford was there as a member of the Survey of India and of the climbing team. Tom Longstaff, well-known old boy from the Alpine Club, came as both medical aid and a climber. He was later president of both the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society, and a friend of Oscar Eckenstein’s protégé Aleister Crowley. By a very interesting co-incidence, he was also a friend of young Sandy Irvine, then at Oxford.

The last of the new members was Teddy Norton: Col. Edward Felix Norton. Teddy was the grandson of my friend Mrs. Wills and her husband Sir Alfred Wills, who’d climbed the Wetterhorn in 1854. He had been a Charterhouse boy, and had learnt to climb at the family chalet in Haute Savoie in Switzerland. He was to spend forty years in the Indian Army, and was afterwards Acting Governor of Hong Kong, which was akin to being Viceroy of India. Urbane and sardonic in his wit, he was the most patient and personable of men. As a commander he led by demonstration rather than force of personality, like Strutt. He was quite tall and lanky, which was to prove something of a problem later in the expedition when it came to sharing a sleeping bag with George. He was rarely seen to lose his temper, even in the most trying of circumstances. He could, and would, tenaciously argue a point but it was never with discourtesy, rather with that calm, rather amused rationality he had developed to cover a sensitive soul. Like Somervell, he was a quite talented painter and a music lover, but like Geoffrey Bruce, he was not above a few practical jokes. I loved him wholeheartedly, first to last, and so did George.

Henry Morshead was there from last year’s expedition. He and his wife lived in Darjeeling, and so he had no travel at all to do, apart from the trek across Tibet. Morshead, bless him, was to disappear in Burma in 1931, and was later discovered to have been murdered. George stayed with them while in Darjeeling, and was very happy for a respite from shipboard or camp life.

He found the journey across Tibet less exciting than the year before, because it was a known route, though the company was better; but in continuing his thoughts on the subject of the glory of unclimbed mountains, he wrote from Phari on the 8 April:

When I see all the wonderful preparations, the great array of boxes collected at Phari Dzong and filling up the courtyard of the bungalow the train of animals and coolies carrying our baggage across Tibet, the thirteen selected Europeans so snugly wrapt in their woollen waistcoats and Jaeger pants, their armour of wind-proof materials, their splendid overcoats, the furred finneskoes or felt-lined boots or fleece lined moccasins devised to keep warm their feet, and the sixty strong porters with them delighting in underwear from England and leathern jerkins and puttees from Kashmir; and, then, unforgettable scene, the scatter of our stores for the Base Camp, the innumerable neatly-made wooden boxes concealing the rows and rows of tins – of Harris’s sausages, Hunter’s hams, Heinz’s spaghetti, herrings soi-disant fresh, sardines, sliced bacon, peas, beans, and a whole forgotten host besides, sauce-bottles for the Mess table, and the rare bottles more precious than these, the gay tins of sweet biscuits, Ginger Nuts and Rich Mixed, and all the carefully chosen delicacies; and besides all these for our sustenance or pleasure, the fuel supply, uncovered in the centre of the camp, green and blue two-gallon-cans of paraffin and petrol, and an impressive heap of yak dung; and the climbing equipment – the gay little tents with crimson flies or yellow, pitched here only to be seen and admired, the bundles of soft sleeping bags, soft as eiderdown quilt can be, the ferocious crampons and other devices, steel-pointed and terrible, for boots’ armament, the business-like coils of rope, the little army of steel cylinders containing oxygen under high pressure, and not least, the warlike sets of apparatus for using the life-giving gas; and lastly, when I call to mind the whole begoggled crowd moving with slow determination over the snow and up the mountain slopes and with such remarkable persistence bearing up the formidable loads, when after the lapse of months I envisage the whole prodigious evidence of this vast intention, how can I help rejoicing in the yet undimmed splendour, the undiminished glory, the unconquered supremacy of Mount Everest?

April 18, ’22 Tinki Dzong
After crossing the Tinki La, we had a short march to Gyangkar Nangpa, and, coming across the flat basin, had in full view before us Sangkar Ri, a prominent rock peak, the most northerly of a remarkable range above the left bank of the Arun River. Howard and I decided to climb that little rock peak of 20,000 feet, to help keep alive in ourselves some appreciation of mountaineering as an enjoyable pursuit. The project demanded a high camp, at 17,000 feet, nearly 4,000 feet above the Gyangkar Nangpa. Seeing that it would clearly be undesirable to employ more than a very small number of porters to carry up tents and sleeping bags for the night, Howard and I at first made a plan for ourselves alone; but Morshead and Longstaff wanted to come with us. This plan was amplified to include them and it was arranged that the four of us should share a Whymper tent. The porters who carried for us in the evening would take down their burdens in the early morning, in time to get them loaded on to the animals at Gyangkar without delaying the main body. The establishment of our camp did not proceed without some little difficulty; one of the porters gave out and had to be relieved of his load, and it was not until we had contoured a hillside for an hour in the dark that we found a suitable place. So soon as we had lain down in our tent, a bitter wind sprang up and blew in at the door; the night was one of the coldest I ever remember.

We hadn’t gone up more than 1000 feet the next morning when Longstaff decided he was too ill to go on, exhibiting all the usual signs of mountain-sickness. He and Morshead turned back while Howard and I pushed on towards a snow col on the North ridge of the mountain. We needed to reach it without delay to take photographs while the view was yet unclouded. I continued at my own pace, and eventually found myself looking down on Howard some distance below me as he struggled up with frequent halts. I thought we shouldn’t get any higher than this, but after a brief halt and some refreshment, he said he was ready to go on. We made our way along a rock ridge, which became ever steeper as we proceeded. Our progress was terribly slow, and I kept thinking as I became more and more fatigued, that surely we had to give up now. We can’t go on climbing such rocks as these. Howard too was badly done in. But whenever I asked how he was feeling he would answer that he was getting along well enough.

As we gradually made our way up, and I kept my eye on my watch, I began to see that we had really a chance of reaching the summit. The rocks were by no means easy, and it is the climbing of difficult rocks that prove the most exhausting when one is affected by altitude. The struggle to overcome the steep obstacle always interferes with regular breathing. Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the advantage in sheer exhilaration of climbing difficult rocks compensates the greater trouble in breathing, so that if I am still in a state to climb them, I find that I prefer even difficult rocks to snow. The actual exertion put forth in mounting even the steepest cliff at these altitudes is often overrated.

We made our way to the foot of a formidable gendarme. We hoped in the first instance that he might be compelled to yield to a frontal attack, but, thirty feet up, we found our way barred by a slab, which was at once so smooth and so exposed that we decided not to climb it, as the rope was insufficient for an abseil on descent. We were out in the sun, but the rocks were so cold that they felt sticky and blistered our fingertips. However, we managed to execute a sensational traverse, and afterwards climbed a steep wall, which brought us out above the slab. We were now in a terribly exposed position and it was necessary to pull myself over an edge of rock to a little platform. A big effort was required, but at that altitude, the reserve of strength I would normally have was exhausted.

Having committed myself to this taxing struggle, the grim thought arose that at the critical moment I might be found wanting and my body refuse to respond when the greatest effort was required of it.. A very great effort was expended before I arrived panting on the airy stance. After these exciting moments, we reached the top of the gendarme without much trouble, but he had coat us too much time. We had already overstepped the time allowed for the ascent according to our intention. The summit was perhaps 500 feet above us and the intervening rocks looked to provide some stiff passages. So we turned back, thinking to waste no time on the descent. But it proved longer than we expected. Last year, with Bullock, I had observed that one may go down a considerable distance at a high altitude, and instead of recovering quickly, as happens in the Alps, one only becomes more fatigued. It was 4.30 P.M. when we reached Gyangkar. I was greatly impressed by Howard’s endurance; he was very tired before reaching the col at the foot of our ridge and was suffering from dysentery, which had begun the day before, but his condition seemed to improve rather than deteriorate above the col. I, for my part, had a severe headache, but I certainly felt no worse than I expected at this stage in our training.

May 6, ’22
Yesterday, Howard and I, chafing at our inactivity in camp, climbed a small peak above the left bank of the Rongbuk Glacier. It was a day of small misfortunes for me. As we were walking on the stony slopes in the early morning my tricouni nails slipped on a granite slab and I contrived to leave there an incredible amount of skin from the back of my right hand. And, higher, as we worked along a broken ridge, a large boulder poised in unstable equilibrium slipped as I brushed it with my knee and fell on the big-toe joint so as to pinion my right foot. It was an awkward moment, for the place was steep; I just had strength to heave it over and down the mountain-side, and luckily no bones were broken but walking was very painful afterwards and perhaps this accident had something to do with the fatigue I felt as we neared the summit. I had been going well enough on the lower slopes, and seemed fitter than Howard, but at 21,000 feet he was apparently no more fatigued than at 18,000 or 19,000 feet, while I could scarcely drag one leg after the other. When we came back into camp I was very glad to take a little whisky in my tea.

May 12, ‘22
On Wednesday, Howard and I set out for Camp III. I was surprised, after we had proceeded some distance along the stones on the left bank of the East Rongbuk Glacier, to observe conspicuous cairn, evidently intended to mark our way along the glacier itself. At the lower end the glacier is completely covered with stones and as we mildly followed the route that had been laid out by Colonel Strutt and his part, we found the glacier far less broken than was to be expected. As we came up the moraine near its left bank we looked northwards on a remarkable scene. From the stony surface of the glacier fantastic pinnacles arose, a strange, gigantic company, gleaming white as they stood in some sort of order, divided by the definite lines of the moraine. Above and beyond them was vast mountain of reddish rock, known only to us by the triangulated height of its sharp summit, marked on Wheeler’s map as 23,180. The pinnacles became more thickly crowded together as we mounted, until individuals were lost in the crowd and finally the crowd was merged in the great tumbled sea of the glacier, exhibiting everywhere the bright surfaces of its steep and angry waves. At Camp II we were surrounded on three sides by this amazing world of ice. We lay in the shelter of a vertical cliff not less than 60 feet high, sombrely cold in the evening shadow, dazzlingly white in the morning sun, and perfectly set off by the frozen pool at its foot. We had another sight to cheer us as we lay in our tents: on the range between us and the main Rongbuk Glacier stood, in one direction of uninterrupted vision, a peak of slender beauty, and as the moon rose its crests were silver cords.

This morning, we worked out way along the true left edge of the glacier and the stones of its left bank. The tracks of Strutt’s party were marked by a conspicuous cairn, where they had turned away from the bank. Their tracks on the glacier were not easy to follow and we quickly lost them; but presently we found another cairn built upon a single large stone and here proceeded with confidence to cross a deep and wide trough of which we had been warned. We knew that once this obstacle was overcome we should have no difficulty to impede our progress to Camp III. The laden porters, however, did not get along so easily. Their nails, for the most part, were worn smooth and they found the ice too slippery. I have never seen in the Alps a glacier surface like this and was greatly surprised by the nature of the bare ice. In a sense it was often extremely rough, with holes and minute watercourses having vertical side 6 inches to 13 inches high; but the upper surfaces of the little knobs and plateaus intervening were extraordinarily hard and smooth and the colour was very much bluer than the usual granular surface of a dry glacier.

May 13, ’22 Camp III
I wrote the foregoing while sitting on the shelf of the Chang La with Dasno, my man, waiting for Howard to finish one of his pastel-drawings, But even his passion for using coloured chalks did not encourage him to stay too long inactive in a place designed to be a funnel for the West wind of Tibet and at 23,000 feet besides. Sooner or later this will be our Camp IV. It was about four o’clock when we noticed the shadows hastening along the shelf, and we knew we had to hurry down. For some hours now all of us had felt a dull altitude headache, which I am told is not unlike the effect of carbon monoxide poisoning. This increased so much on our way down that I was very glad to reach our tent at III again. As it was only fair that Howard should share all my sufferings, it now seemed very inconsiderate of him to boast that he had a very good appetite. I could face no food at all, and only took a little soup. Defeated for the first time in either expedition by the sight of food, I humbly swallowed a dose of aspirin and disappeared into sleep.

A little picture of our camp life may amuse you: I do believe that most men, once they have faced the change from armchairs and spring mattresses, and solid walls and hot baths, and drawers for their clothes and shelves for their books do not experience discomfort in camp life, except in the matter of feeding. However good your food and however well-cooked, sooner or later in this sort of life meals appear messy. The most unsatisfactory circumstance is at Base Camp, where the stability of our ‘X’ tables was frequently disturbed. These have thin iron legs and canvas tops, and too many of our victuals err onto these tables. Their surfaces appear under our eyes with constantly accumulating stains, half rubbed out by a greasy rag. Efforts are made to control the nightly flow, proceeding from X to Y in their cups. Were they cups of beer or whisky we should mind little enough, but the sticky soiling mess is invariably soup or cocoa. The offenders are freely cursed. The tables are scrubbed, table-cloths appear. No effort has ever prevailed. If the curry is tasty and the plate clean, who could complain of a dirty table-cloth at the impurification of which he himself has assisted? I have little doubt that it is this, rather than any gradual drift back towards the Stone Age is to be held accountable for the visible deterioration of our table manners. With all due respect to the General and Longstaff, I record my belief that our manners at Camp III have been better than those at Base Camp.

Though it might be supposed that as we go higher up the mountain we should come to feeding entirely sans façon, it is my experience that the greater difficulties at higher altitudes in satisfying the appetite continually promote more civilised habits of feeding. To outward appearance perhaps, the sight of four men each with a spoon eating out a common spaghetti saucepan would not be altogether reassuring. But one must leave out of the reckoning the gourmet’s peculiar enjoyment in the steamy aroma of things cooked and eaten before any wanton hand has served them on a dish, still less the finer politeness required by several persons sharing the same pot in this manner.

May 15, ‘22
Time passes swiftly enough for Howard and me here at Camp III. We don’t keep the conversational ball rolling quite as rapidly and continuously as in the united Mess, but we have plenty to say to one another. Last evening, we had a long talk after supper about the prospects for climbing the mountain, feeling as we did very brave a hardy after a full day’s rest that we decided, if necessary to meet the transport difficulty half-way and do without a tent in any camp we establish above the North Col, and so reduce the burden to be carried up to Camp IV to three rather light or two rather heavy loads. Then we addressed ourselves to two little volumes I had brought up with me, The Spirit of Man, and the tragedies of Shakespeare. It was interesting to test the choice made in answer to the old question, ‘what book would you take to a desert island?' though in this case it was a desert glacier, and the situation demands rather lighter literature than prolonged edification might require on the island.

There is plenty to do, besides reading and talking. The ordering of even so small a camp as this occupies a good deal of attention. Stores have to be checked and arranged so as to be easily found when wanted. One article or another is sure to be missing, too often to be retrieved when it lies on the stones only after a prolonged search, and even to find a stayed stocking groped for on hands and knees in the congested tent takes a considerable time. The difficult problem of meals has to be considered in connection with the use of available food supplies. We have one ox tongue. Shall we open it today, or ought we to keep it to take up with us? But with a number of details to be arranged, I am impressed not so much by the amount of energy and attention they demand as by the time it takes to do any little thing, most of all to write. Undoubtedly, one is slower in every activity, and none so much as in writing. The greater part of a morning is easily consumed in writing one letter of half a dozen pages, such as this.

May 18, ’22 North Col
Yesterday we started off for this place; fifteen of us: Strutt, Morshead, Norton, Howard and I with ten porters. The snow was in good condition, and we had our old tracks to tread in. The only mishap we could fear was the possible exhaustion of one or more of the porters. My recollection of coming up are of a performance rather wearisome and dazed, of a mind incapable of acute perceptions, faintly stirring the drowsy senses to take notice within a circle of limited radius. The heat and glare of the morning sun as it blazed on the windless long slopes emphasised the monotony. I was dimly aware of this puzzling question of light-rays and the harm they might do. I was glad I wore two felt hats, and that Strutt and Howard had their solar topis. Morshead and Norton had no special protection, and the porters none at all. What did it matter? Seemingly nothing. We plodded on and slowly upwards toward our certain destination. At last, as he struggled up the final slope, Strutt broke into gasping speech, ’I wish that bloody cinema were here. If I look anything like I feel, I ought to be immortalised for the British public.’ We looked at his grease-smeared, yellow-ashen face, and wondered, ‘what in heaven’s name do we look like? And what do we do it for anyway?’

May 19,’22
I try to distinguish between one meal and another, and I am altogether at a loss. They are all interchangeable here. Among the supplies I classify some as ‘standard pattern’, which are always to be had in abundance, the piece, as it were, of our whole ménage – three solid foods, two liquid, and one stimulant.

At Camp III, the stimulant (tea) was amazingly satisfactory. We took it shamelessly before breakfast, and at breakfast again, with or after lunch, and a little before supper when it was known, with some irony on the part of Norton, as afternoon tea. The longer we stayed there the deeper were our potations. The one trouble with it as we progress up the mountain is its scarcity, diminishing when we need it most. Norton has complained of the unpalatability of tea made of water boiled at a temperature which will bear the hand, but I find it makes no difference to the quality; it is only the difficulty of melting snow enough to fill our saucepans that puts me off the endeavour.

Of the liquid foods, cocoa and pea-soup, the former fails in my esteem, though the others seem to enjoy it well enough; the latter has become the base of every meal if not a joke. We have as part of our stock in the high camps ‘Army and Navy Rations’. I have never quite made out what these tins are meant to contain – they are designed to be a stew of mutton or beef, but are instead an ingredient in a peculiar invention of Morshead’s. He calls it ‘hoosch.’ He follows the maxim of the good chef, that the foundation of good cooking is in the stock-pot, a maxim decidedly depressing in our circumstances, so he revised it, with the true genius that penetrates the inner truth, to ‘the foundation of every dish must be pea-soup.’ Or, if these were not his very words, it is easy to deduce that they contain the substance of his culinary thoughts. It is a corollary of this axiom that any and every solid food must be used to stew with pea-soup. Alas, for the limitations to Morshead’s culinary art, we tend to prefer sliced bacon or even sausages to the flotsam and jetsam of the Army and Navy rations.

Of the solid foods, apart from the sausages, biscuits, ham and cheese are among the favourites. We are not sorry to have left the region of fancy breads at Base Camp. Our appetite for these hard wholemeal biscuits has only increased as we have gone upwards, possibly to the detriment of the teeth, which become ever more brittle. Ham, of all foods, is the most acceptable. The quality of our Hunter’s hams leaves nothing to be desired and the supply is, apparently, inexhaustible. We are never short of jam and chocolate. Various sweet stuffs have followed us to the high camps, mixed biscuits, acid drops, crystallised ginger, figs and prunes. Heinz’s spaghetti is reserved for the highest camps exclusively.

May 27, ’22 Base Camp
The night of the 19th-20th we turned in early, after tiffin. It was so fine a night that the flaps of our two tents were still reefed back to as to admit fresh air. Norton and I and Morshead and Howard lay with our heads towards the door, and peering out from the mouth of our sleeping bags we could see the crest above us sharply defined. The signs were favourable. I wonder what the others were thinking if between the intervals of light slumber. I daresay none of us troubled to inform himself that this was the vigil of our great adventure, but I remember how my mind kept wandering over the various details of our preparations without anxiety, rather like God after the Creation seeing that it was good.

My first recollection of the morning of May 20th is of shivering outside the porters’ tents. It is not an enviable task at 23,000 feet to rouse men from the snugness of their sleeping bags at 5 A.M. The replies made to my tender inquiries and encouragements were so profoundly disappointing that I decided to untie the fastenings of the tent, which were as nearly as might be hermetically sealed. In the degree of somnolence and inertia prevailing I suspected the abnormal. The porters were not well. The cause was not far to looks for; they had starved themselves of air during the night. The best chance of a remedy was fresh air and a brew of tea, which could be easily managed.

Norton meanwhile had been stirring and began to busy himself with preparations for our own breakfast. Tea of course was intended for us too, and further two tins of spaghetti had been reserved to give us the best possible start for the day. But one small thing had been forgotten. Those precious tins had lain all night in the snow, and now their contents were frozen stiff and beyond extraction even by an ice-axe. Even so, it might be supposed a little boiling water would put all to rights. Had a little sufficed I should omit to tell this doleful tale. Only very gradually were the outer surfaces thawed, permitting the scarlet blocks to be transferred to a saucepan where they had still to be thawed to homogeneous softness and afterwards heated to the point required for doing justice to the genius of Mr. Heinz.

Of our nine porters five were mountain-sick in various degrees. The whole of our reserve was already exhausted before we had advanced a single step up the North Ridge. After all, we were able to make a start about 7.30 A.M. Morshead was set to lead the party. I followed with two porters, while Norton and Howard shepherded the other on a separate rope.
We had risen about 1,200 feet when we stopped to put on the spare warm clothes which we carried against our old enemy, the wind. For my part, I added a Shetland woolly and a thin silk shirt to what I had been wearing before under my windproof. As this coat is practically windproof and silk is too a further protection against wind, with these two layers I feared no cold we were likely to meet. Morshead, if I remember right, troubled himself no more than to wrap a woollen scarf round his neck and he and I were ready and impatient to get off before the rest.

Norton was sitting a little way below, with his rucksack poised on his lap. In gathering up our rope so as to have it free when we should move on I must have jerked the other rope – sufficient at all events to upset the balance of Norton’s rucksack. He was unprepared, made a desperate grab, and missed it. Slowly, the round soft thing gathered momentum from its rotation, the first little leaps down from one ledge to another grew to excited and magnificent bounds, and the precious burden vanished from sight. For a little interval, while we still imagined its fearful progress until it should rest for who knows how long on the snow at the head of the Rongbuk Glacier, no one spoke.

‘My rucksack gone down the kudh!’ Norton exclaimed with simple regret.
I made a mental note that my warm pyjama-legs, which he had borrowed, were inside it, so if I were to blame I had a share in the loss. A number of offers in woollen garments for the night were soon made to Norton, after which we began to explain what each had brought for comfort’s sake, and I wondered whether their system of selection resembled mine. As you know, I can never resolve in cold blood to leave anything behind, but pack them all into the rucksack and then pull out this and that more or less at random until it is all light enough to carry, which is why I always have more spare clothing in reserve than I actually use.

We were soon plodding upwards again. The sun disappeared behind a veil of high clouds, and soon we were struggling o keep our breath and leaning our bodies against a heavy wind. It was clear that something must be done and without delay as we were in danger of frostbite, continuing on the windward flank of the ridge. While Morshead stopped, at last submitting to put on a sledging suit, I went ahead, abandoning the rocks, and steered a slanting course over the snow to the left. The surface was hard; the angle soon became steeper, and we must have steps to tread in. It was just the place we could have used crampons, but we had decided not to bring them as they tended to encourage frostbite. The only way was to set to work and cut steps.

When we stopped again, it was 11.30 A.M, and the aneroid was at 25,000. 2,000 feet had taken us 3½ hours. For some reason, Morshead was delayed with two or three of the porters, and while we waited, the three of us discussed what should be done about fixing our camp. It had been our intention to camp at 26,000 feet. But it was evident that very few places up there would accommodate our tents. However, from our present vantage there was some ground which appeared less uncompromising than the rest. A broken ledge offered a practicable line towards this place. Whether the decision we came to at this crisis of our fortunes was right or wrong I cannot tell and hardly want to know. But we could not imagine what might be coming without thinking definitely about the porters. They would have to return to Camp IV today, no matter where we set our new camp. The porters must be sent down before the weather grew worse, and the less they were exposed to the cold wind the better. It was 12.30 before the stragglers joined us and were rested enough to go on.

As the broken ledges we followed presented no especial difficulty we were able to explore more than one level in search of some place sufficiently flat for our camp. At about 2 P.M. Howard and some porters shouted the news that one tent could be pitched where they were. On the far side of a defined rib slanting up to the ridge they discovered a sort of platform. We could see no obvious shelf, but Howard and Norton and I started building platforms with rocks, several times coming to the same conclusion: the ground was simply too steep and insecure. At last, we chose the foot of a long sloping slab – at all events it was part of the mountain and would not budge – and built up the ground with some stones we found to hand. It was not a situation which promised a bountiful repose, for one would be obliged to lie along the slope and the only check to his tendency to slip down would be the body of the other. By 3 P.M. we had sent the porters down and proceeded to make our camp for the night. I have no idea what we ate – I only remember some hot drink – Brand’s essence or Bovril. My boots I put into my rucksack and put that under my head for a pillow, to keep them from freezing, for I had decided to wear moccasins to bed as I had to share the sleeping bag with Norton and boots are no good to cuddle.

I had already found out exactly how to be comfortable before Norton was ready to share the accommodation. In our double sleeping bag, I had ample room for myself but not much to spare. Norton’s entrance was a grievous disturbance. It was doubtful for some time whether he would be able to enter. Considering how long and slim he is, it is astonishing how much room he requires. I soon discovered as the chief item of interest in the place where I lay, a certain boulder obstinately immovable and excruciatingly sharp which came up between my shoulder-blades. How under these circumstances we achieved sleep I cannot attempt to explain. Norton’s case was worse than mine. One of his ears had been severely frostbitten on the way up and only one said was available for him to lie on. The damage to Norton’s ear was not all, I noticed, when my hands got warm: three fingertips were badly bruised – frostbitten. The injury, though not serious, was certainly inconvenient. When all is said about or troubles and difficulties the night, in spite of everything, was endurable. The wind had dropped in the evening, as it often does, and it was no colder here than it often is at Camp III; the thermometer showed a minimum reading of 7º for the night.

I do not propose to emphasise the various agonies of our early morning start, but one incident is worth retelling. A second rucksack escaped us, nothing to do with me this time, slipping down from the ledge where it was perched, and went bounding down the mountain. Its value, even Norton will agree, was greater than that of the first, for it contained our breakfast. From the moment of its elusion I gave it up for lost. What could stop its fatal career? But Morshead volunteered to go and get it. By slow degrees he dragged it up, and the precious stores were recovered intact.

In struggling across from one tent to another with an awkward load I was forced to put the question, Is it possible for me to go on? I was clear about my own case. Judging from the physical evidence, No; I hadn’t the power to lift my weight repeatedly step after step, but I knew that I should so on. Something would set the machinery in motion, and somehow I should be able to keep it working. If we were not going to experience ‘the wild joy of living, leaping from rock to rock’, at least this was not to be a sort of funeral procession. We tied on the rope and were off.

We had only moved upwards a few steps when Morshead stopped. ‘I think I won’t come with you any farther,’ he said. ‘I know I should only keep you back.’ However, he declared that he was not seriously unwell and was perfectly capable of looking after himself.

Ascent is possible almost everywhere on these broken slopes. In fact, the whole problem is not unlike that presented by the ridge from the Dôme du Gouter to the summit of Mont Blanc. A nearer parallel perhaps might be the Hornli Ridge of the Matterhorn, if the stones were fewer, larger and more secure. We picked our way almost daintily. There was no question of gymnastic struggles and strong arm-pulls, wedging ourselves in cracks and hanging on our fingertips here. We could allow ourselves nothing in the nature of that violent struggle.

I remember one rather long halt. In spite of all my care I found that one of my feet was painfully cold. Fearing frostbite, I took off my boot. I had been wearing four thick socks and now put back on three. Norton rubbed my foot warm, and it remained so the rest of the day. I have no doubt that the boot was previously too tight.

It was naturally our intention in setting out this day to reach the summit. But from the outset we were short of time; we should have started two hours earlier, and the fresh snow was an encumbrance. Our climbing rate was about 400 feet an hour, diminishing as we went up. As we neared 27,000 feet, it became obvious that we could go no farther; we should still be at best struggling upwards after nightfall. Looking back on my own mental processes as we approached 27,000 feet, I can find no traces of insanity, nothing completely illogical; within a small compass, I was able to reason, although very slowly. I dare say the others were more mentally alive than I, but when it came to deciding what we should do, we had no lively discussion. It seemed to me that we should get back to Morshead in time to take him down to Camp IV. The alternative of sleeping a second night at our high camp and returning to III was never mentioned. We agreed to start down at 2.30 P.M. but we would maintain our rate of progress as best we could until then.

At 2.15 we stopped about 400 feet below the North-east shoulder. It was an obvious place for a halt. We lay against the rocks and in our last fifteen minutes ate what food we had with us, chocolate, acid drops, mint-cake and best of all raisins. We looked around us. The summit was not impressive; we were too near up under this ridge to add anything to former observations as to the nature of its obstacles. We had no hope of finding a trickle of water here as in the Alps to go with our luncheon (or was it dinner?) but Norton, bless him, produced a flask from his pocket and we all had a bit of brandy. So much for the medical opinion of the ill effect of alcohol when in distress at high altitude! I was happily inspired by our medical comfort to announce that I would lead down. Norton and I changed places on the rope. Howard, likewise inspired, decided that he would stay behind to make a sketch. He says that I found it difficult to understand that he would only be a few minutes, and that I replied irritably. I can hardly believe that my tone just then was anything but suave....

At 4 P.M. we reached our camp and found Morshead perfectly well. The fresh snowfall during the night had altered appearances, so we could not be certain as we traversed back toward the ridge, that we were following the line we had made on approaching our camp. My impression is that we went to low and missed it. We were soon working along broken ground above a broad snow slope. It was not a difficult place, and yet not easy; the slope below us was dangerous, yet not steep enough to be really alarming. Perhaps the steps were cut too hastily, or we were taking other risks, but we were unprepared when Morshead lost his footing. Howard was moving behind him and at once was pulled off. Norton, though he must have checked them, could not hold them. In a moment the three of them were slipping down and gathered speed on a slope where nothing would stop them until they reached the plateau of the glacier 3,500 feet below.
I was anxious a moment earlier, though I could see nothing behind me, and warned now by the unusual sounds, I struck my axe into the snow and hitched the rope round the head of it. I certainly couldn’t hold the combined momentum of all three of them at once, but I did the best I could, leaning into the slope, to keep the pick in the snow. It was a very long breathless moment to wait before the belay was put to the test! The rope suddenly tightened, but the pick did not budge. Then it showed what it was worth: holding taut with just a little spring between the three of them. They stopped. Norton swore, because now he should have to climb up again to come back to a place safe for descent. He could have been forgiven for saying much more than he did, but his ejaculation was a relief from the terrific tension. The danger had passed.

The weight of all three had not come down at once. The two lengths of rope were not stretched tight as they fell, and Norton had been checked directly below me, before Morshead and Howard; he was held up by projecting rocks and almost at once recovered his footing. It’s incredible that no one was hurt in this incident, which so nearly could have been a catastrophe.

Our descent from this point was terribly slow. We crawled down the mountain in the gathering darkness: Morshead was in a very bad way. His long halt at our high camp can have done him little good. On our way down, one of us, usually Norton, gave him the support of a shoulder and an arm round his waist. There were long hours of dark ahead of us, punctuated by flickers of lightning from the distant clouds away to the West; we were very aware that bad weather could descend on us at any time. But we had a lantern with us, and a candle too, in Howard’s rucksack, and I was glad that when it came to be required that the Japanese matches, execrated among us, lit without difficulty.

Finally, two hundred yards separated us from our tents, with the promise of safety, repose and warmth in our eiderdown bags. I don’t know how it took us so long to reach them, but I was a bit addled I think, for when we arrived in camp I dimly remember congratulating not Morshead, but Longstaff. I had already transposed his name several times and now he protested; but it made no difference, as I could remember no other name. ‘Longstaff’ had become the idée fixe.

We were in our little camp by 11.30, but a further trial awaited: the porters had taken all the cooking-pots down to III with them. We couldn’t even melt snow for water, let alone heat much needed food. Norton solved this culinary disaster by concocting an ‘ice-cream’ out of strawberry jam and condensed milk. In his visions of all that was succulent and juicy and fit to be swallowed with ease and pleasure appeared in the form of strawberry ice-cream. It was disgusting, and what little gratitude towards Norton I possessed for inventing this concoction for our delectation was cooled by disagreeable sensations. In the last drowsy moments before complete forgetfulness, I was convulsed by shuddering, which I was powerless to control. When we finally reached Camp III at about 10 A.M. the next morning, we found Noel, like a tormentor waiting for his disarmed victim, with his movie camera, winding the handle.

June 9, ’22 Base Camp
When I wrote my last, Finch and Geoffrey were making their attempt with oxygen. They returned on the 29th, having got to 27,300. But they were both badly done over. The weather was dangerous at their high camp, and they went up without food for sleep for two days. They had got closer to the North-east ridge than we did, but at what cost! Geoffrey’s feet were so badly frostbitten that he could not walk, and there was some question of the effect on Finch’s heart. It was days upon their return before they recovered strength enough for the simplest tasks.

As for my own case, it was not the fingertips which gave trouble – Longstaff was of the opinion that there was no deep damage – rather my heart. You will remember that old problem. I felt very weak and lazy on the least exertion, with a rapid pulse, and the heart was found to have the same thrill as happened before. I didn’t care much about the fingers, but I would not take chances with the heart. I was very doubtful of being included in Strutt’s idea of making another attempt on the mountain, but by the 3rd both Finch and I were deemed sufficiently recovered to go up with Howard, Wakefield and Crawford.

On the walk up to Camp I Finch and I were very slow and had to stop frequently. It was painful to see the efforts it cost him to make any progress. But he persisted in coming along. It snowed all the next day, and we were very grateful for the sangars at I. We weren’t certain if the weather would improve or not; there might be good prospects ahead of us yet. We waited, and on the morning of the 5th the weather cleared, and we went up to III. There wasn’t a great deal of snow, which was surprising, but even on the glacier we went up a long way before noticing an appreciable increase in depth. We did not stop at Camp II, but pushed on to III. It was still snowing up here, and the fresh snow became a serious impediment. The clinging snow was so wet that even the best of our boots was soaked through, and the last two hours up to III were very tiresome.

At III the stores were all buried and we had to dig everything out before setting up camp. The tent poles had been removed, to spare them being blown away, and we found them half-full of snow and ice. The snow here, 18 inches of it, was so much deeper that we anxiously discussed the possibility of going further. But the next morning broke fine, and we had clear skies and glorious sunshine. It was the warmest day any of us ever remembered at III. Our chief anxiety then was to provide for the safety of the porters. We hoped that after we established a camp at 26,000 feet – Finch being convinced that his and Geoffrey’s camp at 25,000 was too low – to send them down to the North Col in easy conditions. But first we had to reach the Col. With so much new snow, we should never make it in one journey and thus we decided to carry up loads for part of distance. On the 7th, this is what we began to do.

Crawford, Howard, and I, with fourteen porters, set out at 8 A.M. There had been a hard frost the night before, but the crust was far from firm enough to bear our weight; we sank to our knees with almost every step and it took us two hours to traverse the snowfield. We began to ascend the steep ice-slope. No trace was found of our previous tracks, and we were soon arguing as to where exactly they might be as we slanted across the slope. It was remarkable how well the snow adhered to the ice; we were able to get up without cutting steps at all.

Everything was done by trenching the snow to induce it to come down if it would; every test gave a satisfactory result. If the snow would not come down here where we had formerly encountered a fortiori, we had nothing to fear on the gentler slopes above. Howard led up, for which I was grateful as I found the effort at each step so great that no method of breathing was adequate – it was necessary to pause for a whole series of breaths between steps. About 1.30 P.M. we halted. We were now about 400 feet below a conspicuous block of ice, and 600 feet below Camp IV, still on the gentle slopes of the corridor. The scene was particularly bright and windless, very still, with only the sound of our panting breaths to disturb it.

We were startled by an ominous sound: sharp, arresting, violent, like an explosion of untamped gunpowder. All of us, I imagine, knew instinctively what it was. In a moment, I saw the surface of the snow broken and puckered where it had been even for a few yards to the right of me. I took two steps convulsively in this direction with some quick thought of getting nearer the edge of the danger that threatened us. And then I began to move slowly downwards, inevitably carried on the whole moving surface by a force that I was utterly powerless to resist. For a second, I hardly seemed to be in danger as I went quietly sliding down with the snow. Then the rope tightened and held me back. A wave of snow came over me and I was buried. I really supposed that the matter was settled. Here it ends. Then I remembered what Geoffrey and Longstaff and others of Himalayan experience had said, that the best chance of escape in this situation lay in swimming. After a brief struggle, I was standing again, surprised and breathless. Crawford and Howard too were emerging from the snow nearby me.

But the rope was tight. The porter tied on next to me, I supposed, must be deeply buried. To my further surprise, he quickly emerged, unhurt as myself. But where were the rest? Looking down over the foam of snow, we saw one group of porters some little distance from us. There was no sign of the others; they must be between our parties. We at once decided to try to dig them out, but as we hurried down, we saw that beneath the place where the four porters were standing was a formidable drop; it was only too plain that the men had been swept over it. The ice-cliff was 40-60 feet high in different places. Our fears were soon confirmed. One man was quickly uncovered and found to be still breathing, although the man next to him was killed. Howard and I went down into the crevasse. A loop of rope convinced us that the other party was here. It was slow work loosing the snow with the pick of an ice-axe and shovelling it with our hands. One man was dug up lifeless; another was found upside down and Howard thought at first that he was still breathing – although buried for forty minutes, he had survived the fall, the suffocation, and the weight of his oxygen frame and four cylinders, and suffered no serious harm. We found only one of the other two of this party. Of the other five, all the bodies were recovered, but only one was alive. The two who had so marvellously escaped were able to walk down to Camp III and were almost perfectly well the next day. The other seven were killed.

The porters wished them to remain where they were. This from men who had lost friends or brothers. For my part, I was glad of the decision. In their honour a large cairn was built at III. These are the bare facts. You may read between the lines how anxious I was about this venture.
I feel very much to blame for this accident. It was all due to ignorance. The three of us were deceived; there wasn’t an inkling of danger among us. I feel particularly sorry for the loss of these men. They had done remarkably well.

No amount of telling George that it was not his fault, or Howard’s, would ever convince him of his innocence. It haunted him for as long as he lived. The matter was not helped by those who should have known better – Longstaff and Hinks – making much of their ‘lack of proper mountaineering experience under such conditions’. But other friends were kind. Dear Geoffrey insisted that it was merely the percentage of chance turning against them. No one had ever seen an avalanche on the mountain. He called taking on the responsibility of such deaths, and dwelling on ‘might have beens’ the road to madness. Nevertheless, in view of how he felt about his part in the death of the porters, the international fame that greeted him on his return George found doubly hard to bear. It always struck me that for George, the ardent pacifist for whom all human life was sacred, but values and ideals even more so, recently returned from the trenches where he had seen so much needless and wanton loss of life, to have this scene revisited on him in such an otherwise impeccable mountain setting must have reminded him both of the comparisons of their venture with war, and, paradoxically, of the sanctity of human life, and how fragile and tenuous it is: taken in an instant, whether from the uncaring fracture of a snow slope or the random flight of a piece of exploding shrapnel.