by Hamish Ross
Trepassey arrived this morning, Slessor and O’Sullivan aboard plus fifty-four dogs and eight puppies.
They both seem pleasant, different types. Slessor looks about thirty-two or three, doctor, spent four years at the Rotunda [hospital], comes from Aberdeenshire, looks painstaking and is temperate.
O’Sullivan just a youngster, good-looking in a typically Gaelic Irish way, quite talkative and probably not so temperate. O’Sullivan with us for lunch and Slessor for dinner.
On first impressions I would quite like them to be at the same base as myself.
Empire Might and probably Paraguay will arrive tomorrow.11
Surgeon-Lieutenant Stewart Slessor and Sub Lt Tom O’Sullivan had earlier been sent to Labrador to obtain the huskies and bring them back for the expedition.12 It is interesting that although Mayne rated Slessor as temperate, he was happy that they should both be at the same base, so the whisky test for officer volunteers for 1 SAS (if indeed it was administered) was not designed to reject non-drinkers.
However, their arrival gave Mayne an opportunity to observe Bingham operate as the leader of the group. Until now, during the waiting period, their relationship had been relaxed and informal. They had socialised together, and both were from Northern Ireland, though their service background was very different. Bingham was a surgeon-commander and his man-management experience would not have been as extensive as that of a commander coming up through the seaman branch. Mayne, on the other hand, was not a career officer, but he had the greater leadership experience. On that first occasion, Mayne observed Bingham relating to the two survey members and, very insightfully, he began to make his provisional assessment. From what we have seen, Mayne was considered to be an excellent leader, both by his soldiers and his superiors. But his leadership attributes were not simply instinctive: he had observed and analysed. It becomes clear, for example, from what he wrote that Mayne did not subscribe to the leaders-are-born-and-not-made school of thought. Styles of leadership, in his view, could be cultivated.
The qualities that he felt were important in a leader were: integrity, self-confidence, sensitivity for concerns of others, flexibility of thinking and the confidence to trust others’ judgement. But the whole process and the way the elements were put together he considered an art. Mayne began to assess Bingham:
The Commander gives me the impression he might be, in a way, difficult to work with; that he might think that no one can do a job properly except himself and that the old way of doing things is always the best. I hope I am wrong, for he is a very pleasant person. He lacks guile. I am not certain whether that is a good or bad thing. He does not lack self-confidence. He is, I am certain, a very honest man.13
Mayne went on then to make a brief contrast with David Stirling – perhaps one of the very few records there are of Mayne’s views on Stirling. A shortcoming about Bingham as a leader, in Mayne’s eyes, was that he did not have the ability of ‘making you think you are a most important person. Stirling was a master of that art and it got him good results.’
Concluding his provisional assessment of Bingham, Mayne noted two other characteristics which were important in his reckoning:
I don’t think he is a good listener. I hope he is not indecisive; at times he tends to make me think he is, in that I always seem to have to hang about when we are leaving somewhere, or especially some person. That of course is no criterion, probably very different when there is something to be done in a hurry.14
Sadler, of course, at the time had no idea that Mayne kept a journal. Fifty-six years later, reading what Mayne had written about Bingham, Sadler commented, from his experience of working with the Commander:
I think he could listen but I don’t think he wanted to, because I think he had a theory of command and how you retained command in the naval manner. Whatever you asked him he said, ‘I’ll tell you in good time.’ And he didn’t. I think he was frightened that people would argue with him and he would lose his authority.15
Spare a thought for Bingham though. If, as Sadler suspected, he needed the security of rank to sustain his authority, as commander he could have faced the scenario for a nervous breakdown; for he had as his second-in-command someone who, according to all accounts written since 1958, had floored a superior officer – and there would be no provision for close detention in Antarctica. Bingham, however, almost certainly lost no sleep on that score; for in 1945 the legend about Mayne had not developed to the stage it reached in later years.
No, it was not Bingham who had difficulties; it was Mayne. He would have to adjust to being in a subordinate position on the expedition to Antarctica. And that Thursday morning of 20 December, as he watched Bingham relate to Slessor and O’Sullivan, Mayne reflected on himself. How would he, after having commanded a unit of the calibre of 1 SAS, live with this situation? What comes through, when he considered his new role, is self-awareness and humility.
My own position is simple enough, at least I hope it is. I am not certain just how good I will be at being an underling, but I can be lazy enough to enjoy it, or possibly to tolerate is a better word. I don’t think anyone no matter how lazy could enjoy it. What I will find difficult is not having my opinion asked; not that so far anything has cropped up on which I am sufficiently versed to give a considered opinion. I have no intention of putting forward any suggestions without being previously asked. Better all round if I didn’t.
This is the gloomy side of the picture. I am prepared – and hope – to find myself completely wrong.
In my opinion Slessor and O’Sullivan have done a very good job with the dogs: they merited a little more praise, I believe, than they received – remembering that this is the first time I have ever seen huskies. As little knowledge as the curate, who on the return from his honeymoon and asked if he had found everything all right replied, ‘Yes, but isn’t it hidden in such a cute fashion.’16
So relating to the leader of the expedition presented no insuperable problem; but there were other personnel. Mayne had had no say in their recruitment; he had no expert knowledge in any of the fields that they represented. Nonetheless, all the various specialisms would have to be subsumed for much of the time: general teamwork would apply for the creation and maintenance of bases. Huts had to be erected; supplies from the vast logistical exercise providing materials for accommodation, supplies and fuel had to be manhandled. Sites would have to be found for new bases and the whole enterprise had to be undertaken speedily within the austral summer; and in all of that, interpersonal relationships would be stretched to the limit. As the ships with the personnel and their supplies began to arrive at Montevideo, Mayne’s rigorous sifting and categorising of individuals went on. The basis of his assessment was on character. The qualities which he tolerated least in individuals were conceit, a sense of self-importance and crudity. He had a meal with one of the newcomers and assessed him: ‘It was on the Sunday night that Walton ate with me; he is insufferable, practically, with his conceit in his knowledge; an annoying type, he appears to consider himself most important.’ Of another, he wrote, ‘Salter, a bearded meteorologist is a bore, considers himself important.’ A third he wrote off as ‘a crude little cockney’.
At some point, for there is no date alongside, Mayne wrote a jingle that occurs in its final form at the back of his journal. It may have been intended for the book he planned to write about the unit, because it turns out to be his bowdlerised version of a bawdy song the officers of the unit sang in the mess.
As I was walking down the street,
A fair young maid I chanced to meet,
A Piccadilly bint she hawked her wares,
With shimmying hips and golden hair,
She said, ‘Will you come and share my flat,
Shed your coat and hang your hat?’
I thought of the words of my mother dear,
And the words of love I would never hear,
But I went with her and she taught me much
Of the art of love and the magic touch,
She talked to me of the life she had led,
Of sleepless nights and days in bed,
Now that is the life that is meant for me,
The wine and the women and the laughter free.
When Sadler saw it over half a century later, it rang a bell with him.
This reminds me of a song we used to sing in the mess. It has been rearranged; that is very much the gist of a song we used to sing. He certainly based it on another song. It doesn’t go quite the way I recall it. He may have rewritten it to amuse himself I think. It was too coarse a version for him. He was very anti anything vulgar.17
But it is interesting that while he was against sexual crudity, and therefore tamed the obscene version they used to sing, he kept its erotic edge.
The expedition was divided into three groups for the first leg of the journey, from Montevideo to Stanley in the Falklands. As second-in-command, Mayne noted personnel, their specialist area and their departure. On 21 December, the first ship to leave was William Scoresby with Salter, meteorologist; Mason, surveyor; Joyce, geologist; Butler, signaller; Cummings, signaller; Crutchley, signaller; Francis, surveyor; and Featherstone, meteorologist. The remainder of the expedition spent Christmas in Montevideo. On Christmas Eve, Mayne dined with Tonkin and Andrews at Merinis after ‘a pleasant spot of singing in the English Club’. He returned to the club afterwards with O’Sullivan, until O’Sullivan went to Mass, and he then went round to Sadler’s hotel.18
On 26 December, Trepassey sailed with Slessor, O’Sullivan and Sadler, as well as Stock, signaller; Croft, geologist; Hardy, meteorologist; and Choice, meteorologist. Mayne was anxious to be under way. He had heard that some of their stores were on the Peldie, which was not due until 6 January 1946, and they were trying to find out whether these stores were important enough to hold them up until their arrival. He did not want to spend another nine or ten days in Montevideo. Most of it he enjoyed, he wrote, but if they were delayed until 6 January, he would have been there a calendar month. Since the vast exercise bringing the component parts of the expedition had been orchestrated elsewhere, he and Bingham had little to do until the stage after leaving Stanley for Antarctica, and as the weeks passed he found that doing nothing was very boring. In the event, however, at 11.30 p.m. on Sunday 30 December 1945, the third group of Bingham, Tonkin and Walton, along with Small, signaller; Freeman, surveyor; Andrews and Mayne sailed out of Montevideo.
Then the unexpected happened. On the voyage to the Falklands, Mayne’s spinal injury began to give him severe pain. Now, he had suffered pain with it for at least two years, but this was different. Two weeks elapsed between the journal entry in Montevideo and his next on 11 January 1946, during which he had been examined by two doctors in Stanley: Doctor Slaydon, who was probably based in the hospital there, and Slessor, the survey’s doctor. Mayne recorded the outcome:
My back started getting much worse on the way down to the Falklands, hurting me at night. I tried it out pretty strenuously when we arrived there. It lasted the first day all right, but on the second it went badly. Agonising. Slaydon and Slessor examined it and advised me not to come down. Talked of paralysis and serious trouble, so I am going home. It is still hurting me quite a bit. I think the movement of the ship causes a lot of the trouble.19
This development, however, did not necessarily mean that Mayne would be unable to fulfil his contract with the survey. One option was to go to the UK for treatment and return to the expedition the following year. Another turned up unexpectedly when he was in the Falklands. He and Bingham, with the remainder of the third group, arrived off Stanley late on 3 January and went alongside the following morning. Mayne and Bingham stayed at Government House during the five days that they were there. Mayne wrote, ‘a pleasant old soul the Governor. I enjoyed our stay.’ His Excellency the Governor was not only a pleasant old soul, he was also quick-thinking. Reacting to the medical advice that Mayne should not continue to a base in Antarctica but undergo treatment, he offered Mayne a job in the Falklands.
As they sailed from Stanley in the early hours of 9 January 1946 and headed for Fox and Goose Bay, the choice uppermost in Mayne’s mind appeared to be completing the assignment, because the following day he had an opportunity to discuss matters with Sadler:
Talking to Sadler for a time yesterday; difficult to know what to do when all this is over. He will be twenty-eight when he comes back, I’ll be thirty-three. I am not particularly worried. The Governor’s offer of a job in the Falklands did not attract me overmuch.20
Until he read those words in 2001, Sadler had no inkling of Mayne’s problem, because during the war Mayne had not revealed it in the unit. Reflecting on their time with the expedition, Sadler recalled, ‘I thought at first – at the time – that it might have been a diplomatic pain, that he couldn’t stick Bingham, but that might be wrong. He was obviously in much worse pain than I thought he was.’21 However, Mayne had no need to come to a decision immediately. A quick return to the UK was not possible anyway: the allocation of groups to their respective stations had to be completed, and he would have to return by one of the survey ships (bringing back returning members from Operation Tabarin). They continued south. Their destination in Antarctica was Deception Island, Base B, between the South Shetland Islands and the continent of Antarctica.
The first two days out from the Falklands were calm, but as the ship got well into the Drake Passage, the temperature got much colder and the sea became boisterous. The pitching and rolling of the ship did not do much good for Mayne’s back and on the night of 11 January, he recorded that he had scarcely slept with the pain he was suffering. In other respects, he was a good sailor and suffered the effects of sea sickness less than the two colleagues, Freeman and Small, with whom he shared a cabin. Of Small he wrote, ‘I like him, young but amusing and pleasant. I like good manners in people.’22
In the knowledge that he would have to return home, Mayne appears to have felt fairly relaxed about the dislocation of his plans. He may have viewed his situation as he would had something similar happened during the war: delayed admission to hospital for treatment, followed by convalescent leave and return to unit. Certainly, judging from his journal entries, for about ten days after Doctors Slaydon and Slessor examined him, such seems to have been his reaction. And the interest that he showed in the beginning in anticipating living in the South Polar Region was maintained.
As they headed further south, the temperature fell below freezing and there were snow showers and periods of sunshine. Choosing his moment, he photographed some icebergs. Throughout his time with the survey, Mayne’s journal shows that he responded with sensitivity to his surroundings. On 11 January, he noted that he had seen a whale and, the following day, his first iceberg. Then there were whales blowing and ‘lots of penguins bumping through the water’. Although his back was giving him a lot of trouble, he tended to be optimistic each day: ‘I hope I don’t notice it so badly tonight.’ But two days later, he recorded that he had wakened with a most annoying headache, which he associated with his spine and pressure on a nerve. He came on deck as they were passing Cape Melvin on King George Island and witnessed, he said, a terrific sunrise.
On 13 January they reached Deception Island and the ship worked its way round to the entrance: Mayne described Deception Island as being formed from an extinct volcano whose centre provided an excellent harbour. There Featherstone and Crutchley disembarked along with their supplies. Then the ship headed further south for Port Lockroy, Base A, where Hardy and Stocks were to be based. To each of the bases, Mayne wrote, two Falkland Islanders were also assigned. On 17 January, he took a photograph at 1.30 a.m. before they left Lockroy, heading for Louise Island and then Laurie Island. As a base he preferred Lockroy to Deception Island: it was cleaner, whereas there was a lot of lava at Deception Island. They were making first for Louise Island, where Base C was to be established. On 19 January, passing the black basaltic cliffs of Elephant Island, Mayne recalled Shackleton’s party’s
survival there and the epic journey Shackleton and five companions made to South Georgia to bring rescue:
Saw seven or so whales yesterday and also seals on the ice. Today we passed Elephant Island where Shackleton set off for South Georgia from. I would have liked to have gone ashore and seen if anything or any relics remained of his party’s stay.23
Mayne may have read of Shackleton’s expedition, but there were more direct links. The first leader during 1943–4 of Operation Tabarin was Cdr Marr, who as a young man had been one of Shackleton’s team on the Quest expedition, so there was a local tradition of knowledge. So when Mayne wondered if there would be any evidence or relics of the party’s stay on Elephant Island, what he had in mind were traces of the most fundamental means of support that they had been able to take with them for their survival – sledges, implements and tents. The party had had to survive for about ten months in some of the most inhospitable conditions on the globe. Shackleton’s strength of character was critical in imbuing the will to survive, and his great care for his men was well known. His was a kind of leadership that Mayne understood. Indeed, there are parallels in leadership between Shackleton and Mayne: each was an inspiration to his men; each, subsequently, became an inspiration to others for decades.
Earlier that day, 19 January 1946, as they were making their way towards Laurie Island, Mayne reviewed his shorter-term options:
I am then half-thinking of transferring to the Trepassey and going round to Marguerite Bay with her. Doing that I couldn’t be back to Stanley until some time in early April. It might be quite pleasant to travel on with her up to Newfoundland and cross from there home. Except at night, my back isn’t too bad. I put some Elastoplast on yesterday to see whether or not it would help.
If I went that way I would probably be home some time in June, go straight to hospital and be home in July, take two or three months convalescent leave and then decide what to do, either to come out here again or to settle down in some job.