Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine (27 page)

Like Norton, Howard Somervell was a veteran of the 1922 Mount Everest expedition.  He too had witnessed the Great War and, as a newly qualified surgeon in 1915, had seen some of the most shocking sights and had dealt with almost every type of medical emergency.  After the War he left Britain and became a missionary doctor, working in southern India.  He spoke several Indian dialects fluently and was an accomplished watercolourist and amateur musician.  On the 1922 trek, through his knowledge and love of music, he made a fine collection of Tibetan folk songs, which he later transcribed for Western instruments.  He was much thicker set than Norton physically and a few inches shorter.  He was a highly regarded alpinist, recently having done a summer’s climbing in the Alps with Beetham where they made some difficult ascents.  Finch had thought Somervell too muscle-bound to perform well at altitude, but in this he was wrong.  Somervell was extraordinarily strong and although he acclimatized slowly, once he did so he was a match for any of the others.  He was much occupied in his role as expedition doctor during the march as the other medical officer, Hingston, was obliged to escort the general back to Darjeeling only rejoining the expedition at base camp on 11 April.

Shebbeare, the transport officer, was a new recruit for the 1924 expedition and the man with whom Sandy found he had the most in common.  Shebbeare worked for the Indian Forest Department and had experience of the local conditions and of working with the type of men that were to be the expedition porters.  General Bruce was delighted to have someone of his experience and reputation as transport officer.  He spoke very highly of him, in particular mentioning his sympathetic temperament which enabled him to get the best out of the men they had employed as porters.  He had no previous experience of high altitude mountaineering but, as Bruce pointed out, that was not his job.  In the event Shebbeare turned out to be an all-rounder and climbed as high as Camp III where he spent two days with Sandy helping him to make a rope ladder to ease the porters’ passage up the formidable ice chimney between camps III and IV on the North Col.  He became the acknowledged ‘King’ of Camp II and Norton wrote of him in a dispatch to the
Times
dated 14 June 1924:

It was decided that Mr Shebbeare’s knowledge of the language and of the psychology of the porters called for his presence on the lines of communication rather than at the Base Camp.  Accordingly he was established as king of No. II.  From that moment we at the higher camps never had to look over our shoulders or give a moment’s anxious though to our line of supply.  Food for the Sahibs and porters, fuel and stores of all sorts, arrived smoothly as required, and, more important still, we knew that the comfort and health of the porters on the lines of communication were well cared for.

Like several of the others, Shebbeare kept an expedition diary.  In 1939 he lent it to the Government press in Kuala Lumpur and thus fortunately it survived the Japanese invasion of Malaya in the Second World War, when his home and many of his other possessions were destroyed.  When he was released from the POW camp at the end of the war he was able to retrieve the diary and some notes from the Head Lama of Rongbuk. He made a transcription in 1948, which includes the typewritten memoirs of the Rongbuk Lama.  In the explanatory note at the front of the diary, Shebbeare rather plays down the relevance of his own writings, but it is a fascinating document and sheds much light on the march across Tibet and brings a deal of humour to the story.  Sandy and Shebbeare worked closely together as mess secretary and transport officer and his gentle manner and practical approach put Sandy at his ease.  I sense that he felt more comfortable with Shebbeare than anyone else on the expedition despite the fourteen-year age difference.   Shebbeare had a keen wit and a wonderful eye for observing detail, not only about the wildlife, which was his chief interest on the march, but also about the other members of the expedition.  Once, at Camp II, he sent a note up to III expressing concern as to the whereabouts of Beetham who had been due into II the previous evening.  He had spent three hours out on the glacier with a lamp and concluded that Beetham must be dead.  He sent a note up to Norton which read, ‘If he left Camp III yesterday we’d better try to recover the body – if he didn’t he’s a bugger for not letting me know!’

Geoffrey Bruce was the general’s nephew and another veteran of 1922. He had achieved a height record on that expedition with George Finch when the two of them reached 27,300 feet breathing supplemental oxygen and had been invited to join the 1924 expedition on account not only of his climbing achievements in 1922, but also on the grounds of his ability to get the Sherpas and porters to do what was required of them.  He worked closely with Shebbeare during the march and frequently had to deal with truculent Dzong Pens and transport officials which he did in a calm but persuasive manner, always getting his own way in the end, but sometimes having to argue for hours with the locals.  Shebbeare noted that the longest argument they ever had lasted for a full nine hours.  Geoffrey Bruce was a close friend of Norton’s and he helped him write the dispatches for the
Times
.  In a private letter that Norton wrote to members of the 1922 expedition after the deaths of Mallory and Irvine Geoffrey Bruce allowed himself some asides which give an inkling of the repartee that went on between him and Norton whilst composing the dispatches.  He makes interjections saying exactly what he thought Norton meant rather than the more tactful phrases that were finally written.  At twenty-eight he was the closest in age to Sandy and right from the start the two hit if off and I sense that Geoffrey Bruce was the kind of man who Sandy would have been very glad to have as a friend in later life.

Hingston was the official expedition doctor and surgeon.  He was also the expedition’s naturalist.  Bruce was delighted with him and commented that he ‘came bursting with energy and enthusiasm to test every member of the Expedition with every terror known to the RAF authorities.’ He was of a cheerful disposition and had an ‘unfailing humorous outlook’.  He was not expected to climb high on the mountain but in the event he had to go up to Camp IV to rescue Norton when he was stricken with snowblindness after his summit attempt.  Hingston had his work cut out during the expedition.  His first casualty was General Bruce whom he escorted from Tuna to Gangtok before returning to join the expedition and by the time he finally arrived at Base Camp on 11 May there were several very sick men for him to attend to.  Despite the problems he encountered in his professional capacity, Hingston seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the whole Everest experience.  On the way back to Kampa Dzong from Gangtok he wrote to General Bruce giving descriptions of his enjoyment of the road through the forests and adding that he had captured ‘no less than 300 different kind of bugs without even dismounting’.  A
Times
journalist present at the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society meeting held at the Albert Hall in October 1924, described Hingston in his article the following day as ‘the man who enjoyed it most’.  As a naturalist, ‘every stone in Tibet was to him a potential goldmine for under it might lurk something really fascinating – such as a tick’.

Captain John Noel was the expedition’s official cameraman.  He was not part of the climbing party and worked independently from the rest of the expedition in that he ran his own outfit, organized his own porters, transport and runners, but he was a popular member of the team.  He had accompanied the expedition in 1922 when he had set up a darkroom at base camp so that he could develop his photographs on site. In 1924 the whole photographic outfit was much more professional.  Noel had approached the Everest Committee offering to buy the film and photographic rights for the whole expedition for a staggering sum of £8000, which, he and his backers believed, could be recuperated by future takings from the film he would be making.  The Everest Committee needed to be asked only once.  Such a large sum would in one fell swoop alleviate all their funding problems.  Noel organized his team somewhat differently in 1924.  There had been problems with developing photographs at Base Camp in 1922, since it had proven extremely difficult to keep the improvized darkroom tent dust free.  This year he set up a darkroom in Darjeeling and had a series of runners between there and Base Camp taking films back for developing, thus enabling him to keep the
Times
supplied with photographs of the expedition as it progressed.  Sandy, being a keen photographer, got on well with Noel.  The two of them had similar interests in the technology of photography and Sandy more than once was called in to repair a broken piece of photographic equipment.  Mallory was less than enthusiastic about the filming of the expedition but he liked Noel and wrote to Ruth from Darjeeling: ‘Noel’s movements are independent (i.e. he doesn’t belong to one or other party); he is more than ever full of stunts; the latest is a Citroen tractor which somehow or another is to come into Tibet – a pure
ad
of course / - (this may be a secret for the present).’

Such was the makeup of the expedition, not forgetting Odell, Hazard and Beetham, that met on 23 March 1924.  Everyone was full of optimism and the 1922 veterans each privately expressed the belief that they had the strongest possible team.  Indeed Norton wrote later: ‘I don’t believe a stronger party will ever be got together for Everest.’

The day after they arrived in Darjeeling Bruce called a meeting to hand out duties for the trek.  Hazard and Sandy were appointed as the two mess secretaries, and spent a good deal of time receiving instruction about how to fulfil their task ‘most unpleasant & difficult as I don’t know a word of the language’, Sandy observed.  It was an obvious job to give Sandy, he being the youngest and least experienced member of the party, but it was the lowliest of all the jobs and brought him into contact with the porters with whom he foresaw much fun trying to talk in signs and pictures.  He was allotted two porters of his own, neither of whom spoke a word of English.

The baggage was due to leave on the Monday after their arrival and Sandy struggled  to pack all his kit and clothing into the limited amount of weight that he was permitted.  He was carrying a tool kit that weighed as much as his tent and this meant that he had to restrict himself to fewer clothes and other items in order not to overburden the pack animal.  Each team member was permitted a pair of mules to carry their baggage and each mule could be loaded with 160 pounds of kit but that had to include their own tent, which weighed sixty pounds.  This left 260 pounds to be distributed between suit and ice axe cases and Sandy’s very heavy tool kit and cameras.  He gave himself quite a headache trying to arrange all his own affairs in time for their departure but eventually succeeded.  He had another task to fulfil in Darjeeling which was to test the equipment that had been ordered in England.  The first thing to command his attention was a new paraffin cooker, which he described as looking like an enormous brazing lamp.  This, he concluded, ‘seemed very satisfactory but rather heavy’.  He then examined the ladder bridge, the primus stoves and the tool kit, the box for which had already almost disintegrated, he noticed to his disgust.

In addition to testing the stoves and packing and repacking his kit, Sandy visited Lady Lytton, the wife of the governor of Benghal, who happened to be Tony Knebworth’s mother.  He wrote to Lilian:

I’ve had one afternoon’s delightful tennis with Lady Lytton & family who wanted to know all the news about her son Tony Knebworth otherwise Lord K – who was out at Mürren all the time with us – I tactfully kept off the subject of Oxford as I believe he has just been sent down from Magdalen for playing roulette!  Lord Lytton (or whatever his title is) is Governor General of Bengal & in Calcutta at present but the rest of the family & all the ADC’s at Government House are a very delightful lot.

Lady Hermione Lytton, Tony Knebworth’s sister, was a girl of fifteen or sixteen in 1924 and was living at the time in Darjeeling.  I wanted to know whether she had any memory of Sandy but she sent back a reply saying that while she had no clear recollection of Sandy she did recall being very taken with Colonel Norton.  Hardly surprising: he was very dashing.  Sandy was so enjoying his time with the Lyttons that he left his final packing rather to the last minute on the Sunday and did not get it done until 1.30 a.m. on the Monday when it was due to leave for Kalimpong. 

On the Monday evening, the night before the expedition left Darjeeling, Hingston carried out a series of medical experiments on the climbers to assess their physical and mental condition at 7000 feet.   The tests were of necessity rudimentary as Hingston had no means to carry complicated apparatus on the trek.  They were based on tests that had been carried out on RAF pilots and involved observations on alterations in breathing, circulation, muscular power and mental activity.  Sandy could hold his breath at 7000 feet for twenty seconds longer than any of the others and his expiratory force matched that of Geoffrey Bruce and exceeded the others as well.  When it came to blowing mercury up a tube and holding it he performed less well, only coming third.  He made careful notes of his own performance and seemed satisfied with the results although he noted that he ‘got the arithmetic right but slow for me’.  Mallory, it must be said, consistently outperformed all the others in the mental activity tests and by ever-increasing margins as the altitude increased. 

Just before they left on the Tuesday morning Sandy penned a quick note to his father asking him to send a letter to Spencer in London requesting reimbursement for the cost of the primus burners and the tool box ‘which incidentally has nearly disintegrated already’. There had been some confusion over the address that had been given for post and he was anxious that his parents should use the correct address which was given as Mt Everest Expedition, c/o Post Master, Darjeeling ‘& not Yatung Tibet as the Everest Committee informed us after we had sailed’.  Keeping in touch meant much to the expedition members.  Time and time again in their letters and diaries they refer to their delight or disappointment when the post bag arrived in camp.