by Ed Caesar
An official named Donaldson wrote a scribbled message to a colleague: “Do you know anything of this aviator’s alleged intention to fly to Everest? So far as this Dept. is aware he has not obtained permission to fly anywhere outside India.” A few days after this polite discussion between civil servants began, L. V. Heathcote, a senior businessman in the Burmah-Shell Oil Company in India—whose services Wilson would need, to refuel—wrote to a government friend of his, Sir Frederick Tymms, the director of civil aviation in India. The oilman was aghast at Wilson’s plans. “Could there ever have been a more crazy idea?” he asked Tymms, before continuing:
I am not at all sure that it is any business of ours but do you think that to allow such suicidal journeys to be undertaken is going to do civil aviation any good? The man may, of course, have sufficient sense to give the idea up, when he is advised to do so, as he surely will be by someone whom he meets in India but in case he goes on with it, have you powers to stop the attempt, and if you have, would you think of exercising them?
Tymms replied that there were indeed powers at his disposal. He told Heathcote that “instructions will be issued to the Officer-in-Charge, Karachi Air Port, to intercept him on his arrival, and to make it quite clear that the flight is not approved and that an attempt to carry out without permission will lead to the withdrawal of all facilities in India and probably a good deal more.” This correspondence joined the back-and-forth between the civil servants in London. The drumbeat grew louder: Wilson had to be stopped.
The discussion about Wilson’s flight moved up several layers of bureaucracy, through further scribbled notes, until it reached Sir Samuel Hoare, the secretary of state for India, who knew more than his fair share about foreign adventures. Hoare had been a spy in the First World War, reported on the murder of Rasputin, recruited Benito Mussolini as a British intelligence asset, and became secretary of state for air in 1922—all before his most prestigious political appointment as secretary of state for India in 1931, during which he negotiated with Gandhi about Indian independence. Hoare looked at Wilson’s case and, in the words of his secretary, asked someone to warn the Yorkshireman “that he cannot be permitted to fly across the frontier without the consent of the Nepalese Govt. which is not likely to be forthcoming.”
A letter from Mr. Bertram at the Air Ministry conveying Sir Samuel’s thoughts was sent to Wilson, care of his mother at 28 Bargrange Avenue in Shipley. The letter concluded with a firm warning not to attempt the flight, as permission to fly over Nepal would never be granted.
Wilson brushed off Bertram’s cautionary note. In a return letter sent two days later, on May 10, Wilson told Bertram that, yes, he planned to fly to Everest over the Kingdom of Nepal, and he didn’t see why that should cause any fuss:
I wish to record the strongest disapproval of your concluding remarks, following as they do so closely upon the recent Everest Flight which presumably would require the same permits as in my own case.
If it is the desire of the Air Ministry to foster the development of Civil Aviation, I would suggest that an offer of assistance would have been the more correct, and sporting, attitude for you to have taken up.
A final letter, from the Air Ministry to Wilson, was sent five days later:
Dear Sir,
With reference to your letter of 10th May, it is evident that you have completely misunderstood the position.
The recent Everest flight expedition obtained permission to fly over Nepalese territory only after elaborate negotiations with the Nepalese Government by the Government of India, who required special undertakings to be given.
The India Office, therefore, when we wrote concerning your proposed flight to Purnea, asked us to warn you that you cannot be permitted to fly across the frontier without the consent of the Nepalese Government which, they added, was not likely to be forthcoming.
For this reason it is quite impossible for the Air Ministry to give you any encouragement with regard to flight to Mount Everest involving crossing Nepalese territory.
Yours faithfully,
F. G. L. Bertram
Wilson did not reply to the letter. When a reporter asked him about the objections of the Air Ministry, he appeared to relish his fight with the officials. Wilson told the journalist, “The gloves are off!”
* * *
Wilson sensed, correctly, that the Air Ministry had no real power to stop him from flying to India. Yes, they could make life difficult for him. They could ask the oil companies to refuse him fuel, they could lose a permit or two, they could give him the cold shoulder at British bases. But stop him? In Wilson’s words, they didn’t have a dog’s chance. He was breaking no laws. If the civil servants had any real authority to bar him from flying, they would have told him so. Instead, they offered muffled, measly warnings: it is quite impossible for the Air Ministry to give you any encouragement. Wilson wanted no encouragement from higher-ups. In fact, their disapproval was a powerful spur.
The Nepal situation caused him a headache, for sure, but all he needed to do was to get to India. From there, he could take his chances. On May 16, five days before his departure date, the Air Ministry cabled Wilson with a final warning:
INDIAN. GOVERNMENT. STATE. THEY. ARE. NOT. PREPARED. TO. APPROACH. NEPAL. GOVERNMENT. FOR. PERMISSION. FOR. YOUR. FLIGHT. TO. EVEREST. AND. DESIRE. YOU. TO. BE. WARNED. THAT. IN. NO. CIRCUMSTANCES. ARE. YOU. TO. BE. PERMITTED. TO. MAKE. THE. ATTEMPT.
Wilson ignored the cable. He continued to prepare his equipment. His airplane was nearly out of the shop, with its fuselage repaired and all final adjustments made. Long-distance tanks were in the front cockpit now, along with the sturdy undercarriage and the big wheels for snow. He was ready.
Wilson put his affairs in order. He decided not to return to Bradford, to bid his family a last farewell. Instead, he stuck with his small circle of friends in London. Wilson did not want to upset his mother, who was ill. His brothers would only tell him what he did not want to hear: Don’t do it, lad.
CHAPTER EIGHT HE IS NOT REPEAT NOT TO PROCEED
• May–June 1933 •
On the morning of Wilson’s departure for Everest, he rose early, then wrote a few letters at his flat on Holmstall Avenue. One, to “my dear Len,” formalized their business relationship, giving Len Evans authority to sell publicity on Wilson’s account. He also granted Len power of attorney, then left everything to the Evanses in his will, before he walked out of his front door to Stag Lane for the final time.
In the minutes before the propellers whirred, it was as if a spotlight shone on Wilson. For months, he had explained his plan to anyone who would listen: to fly an airplane to the Himalayas, to land it on the lower slopes of Everest, then to climb to the summit of the world’s highest mountain—all utterly alone. Most people thought Wilson had a big mouth. Some thought him crazy. But on that Sunday morning at the airfield, he appeared at last to be making good on all his talk. A small group of onlookers watched him, rapt.
There are only a few records of the thoughts, feelings, and fears of the group who gathered at Stag Lane on that bright, May morning. The photographs that survive evince a kind of vertigo: a dissonance between the vast scale of the challenge, and the insubstantial tools being applied to its conquest. It was as if Wilson’s friends were pushing him off in a rowboat to cross the Pacific Ocean. Whatever the crowd’s apprehensions, its fascination with Wilson was undeniable. As zero hour approached, every one of that gaggle of intimates, reporters, fellow fliers, and curious bystanders observed him with the intensity with which they might have watched John Gielgud play Hamlet at the Old Vic. Wilson may have been doomed, but he was the show.
Maurice Wilson, the airman. May 1933.
Wilson’;s friends wave him off. May 1933.
Wilson’s traveling outfit was characteristically arresting. He wore a flying suit and cap, a leather jacket, goggles, and his heavy hobnail boots. The effect was strange. He looked like a man going to a fancy-dress party as an aviator. Every aspect of the getup was perfect
except for one detail that marked him as an actor: the gigantic boots. No real flier would have worn them. They were the shoes of a laborer, not an artisan: too heavy to finesse the Moth’s delicate rudder with the pedals. Wilson, who had already been the butt of many jokes at the Aero Club about his unusual flying outfits, couldn’t have cared less. Like every other bit of gear, his footwear had been selected for a purpose. He not only had to fly, but to walk and to climb. He needed the boots.
Len Evans, wearing a beret and an overcoat, had ensured a good showing from the press. At Stag Lane, a handful of reporters and photographers worked an early Sunday morning to give their editors a daub of color for Monday’s papers. At the airfield, a journalist from Reuters worked the crowd to find the vinegary quote he wanted, from a “friend”: “Wilson is very keen, but the fact is he has not a chance. Everyone has pointed this out to him, but he was determined to try.”
* * *
In his letters home, Wilson returned many times to these nervous minutes before the takeoff at Stag Lane. It was one of the moments that spurred him on; an episode that renewed him. The power of this memory for Wilson was in its simplicity. He was the limelit hero of his own story, and all of the complications and sorrows of his life were subsumed by the great adventure on which he was about to embark.
Wilson made a final tour around Ever-Wrest. A beautiful plane: thirty feet from wingtip to wingtip, twenty-three feet and eleven inches long; 920 pounds of plywood and spruce, British steel and Irish linen; now laden with an extra 500 pounds of expedition gear.
Enid had tied a mauve ribbon to Wilson’s engine cover, as an amulet. Wilson would treasure the ribbon. He opened the engine cover now, to check the gaskets. Four cylinders, one hundred horsepower. He turned a faucet to make sure no water had crept in alongside his fuel. He flooded the carburetor, so she was juicy for takeoff. He inspected the oil tank, to make sure it was full to the brim. The Moth was thirsty: she drank six gallons of fuel and a pint and a half of oil an hour.
Finally, Wilson once more checked the maps he would hold as he flew. Each stop on his journey had been painstakingly considered. His plane could only hop so far before she needed refueling. He had made sure his maps were ordered sequentially, then cut thin enough to be held in his left hand. Up in the air, Wilson could not hesitate or doubt himself. He would be flying by compass and church steeple.
It was time to go. Wilson asked a few of his friends to sign the Union Flag he intended to plant at the top of Everest. He called the pennant his “flag of friendship.” The signatures on it meant the world to him, much more than the emblem itself. He was no nationalist. He had seen which way that road led. The press photographers snapped pictures as he climbed into the rear cockpit—from the left, as always, as he’d been taught, as if he were getting on a horse.
Other fliers came to bid him farewell. One was his instructor, Nigel Tangye, who wished him the best of luck. Another was Jean Batten, whose recent attempt to beat Amy Johnson’s record from England to Australia had ended with a crash landing near Karachi, in northwest India. On that morning at Stag Lane, she wore a coat with a fur collar. Wilson held her right hand and smiled at her. He had promised to sell her Ever-Wrest when he returned, triumphant, from the mountain. She held a cigarette in her gloved left hand, sirenically.
Finally, Enid came to the plane, carrying her fox terrier, Mickey. Wilson stroked the dog’s head. What words were spoken between Wilson and Enid were lost in the breeze. You wonder, Was there a kiss? Len looked on. Perhaps a squeeze of the hand, a meaningful glance. Then the spectators stepped back. Wilson flicked the magnetos, shouted, “Contact!” An engineer swung the propellers six times before they spun. The noise was infernal. The chocks by the wheels were taken away.
Wilson maneuvered the airplane onto the runway, moving his head left and right over the plane’s flanks to check his direction. The wind socks should have told him which way to take off—upwind, always. But, as an inexperienced flier feeling the rush of the moment, he forgot the rudiments of his lessons with Mr. Tangye. He began his takeoff in the wrong direction, then hurtled down the strip with the wind behind him.
The Moth gained speed, but without a headwind to help provide lift, it remained earthbound. As the plane accelerated, disaster approached. Wilson was almost at the perimeter of the airfield when, at last, Ever-Wrest rose lazily, like a months-old duckling following its mother from a pond. Wilson’s plane cleared a hedge by inches, then ascended into the morning sky. The crowd watched the Moth until it was no longer visible, and dispersed for church, lunch, the newspapers. The show, for them, was over.
* * *
Ever-Wrest ascended into the London sky, shaking and rolling a little as it gained altitude. Wilson flew ten miles, over the twin towers of the football stadium at Wembley, and landed at Heston airfield in West London, to clear customs. With his paperwork signed, he took off again—upwind, this time—and began his journey toward the Continent. Wilson would later recall the thrill as he flew southeast, over the English Channel. England behind him, and France ahead. The magic of peering at the matchstick boats beneath him, for a quarter of an hour. The thought of the sailors, necks craning skyward, and the kick they’d get as they watched him pass overhead. Wilson had left England many times before, but never by air.
Even with the extra fuel tanks fitted in the front of the plane, Wilson’s Moth could not fly all day. It was five thousand miles from London to Purnea, the northern Indian town from where Wilson planned to set off for the last stage of his journey—over Nepal, to Everest. A little more than two weeks’ flying, if all went according to plan. The staging posts were plotted with delicacy. The first stop was Freiburg, in southwest Germany, which was nearly five hundred miles from Stag Lane. At an average cruising speed of around eighty miles per hour, that was more than six hours away. There was no need for food on the journey—Wilson had trained himself to fast like a monk—but when he needed to pee, a bottle was filled, then emptied onto the French countryside.
Wilson flew low enough to see the world in detail. Roads, hedgerows, cows. His route took him over northeast France, a patch of land he knew too well: the old front line, more or less. The British nicknames for these flattened towns were still burned into his memory: Push Villas, Wipers, White Sheet—the places where so many of his pals went to their reward, and he was spared. The pockmarked ground now cut again into fields, and the farmers still reaping a metal harvest. Wilson flew over Arras, and over Champagne, and finally into Germany. He landed the Moth on the airfield at Freiburg, the fairy-book town in the Black Forest, from whose runway Luftstreitkräfte planes had taken off sixteen years ago, iron crosses on their tails, bound for his side of the line.
* * *
Any enmity Wilson may have felt for German people during the war was long gone. He had loved the language since his lessons with Mr. Whittaker at Carlton Road Secondary, and the previous summer, his two-month health kick in Freiburg had reordered his life. If it hadn’t been for Freiburg, he might never have gotten the notion for this Everest mission. He was happy to return, although Germany had changed since his last visit: a fire in the Reichstag blamed on a Communist; Hitler in charge; mass rallies; swastikas; burned books.
Wilson landed at a little after 3:00 p.m. and spent the night at the home of Frau Baudendistel, his hostess from the previous summer, to whom he unburdened his plans to conquer Everest. She was fond of Wilson. He rose early the next morning to fly to Passau, in eastern Germany, for his journey across the Alps. His proposed route was a three-and-a-half-hour flight, from the west of Germany to its east. He planned to stop at Passau, refuel, then pick his way through the mountains to Milan. He’d taken particular care with this section of the route. The peaks of the tallest mountains were higher than he could fly Ever-Wrest, and he did not want, as his fellow aviators said, to “go bang.”
Wilson flew out of Passau at a little after noon. But soon the clouds closed in. Other fliers had died in the Alps in bad weather. “Hustling”
Bert Hinkler, the Australian aviator, had smashed his Puss Moth in the Pratomagno mountains in Italy only months earlier. A hero lost at the age of forty. Wilson had no plans to join him.
The dense gray began at seven thousand feet. Wilson’s laden craft would not rise above nine thousand feet. He realized he would be too low for safe passage through the Alps. Wilson flew on, hoping to lose fuel and ascend above the clouds, but it was hopeless. It was also freezing in the open cockpit. Anything above three thousand feet in any kind of weather was chilly in the Moth. Now, above seven thousand feet, Wilson would have struggled to retain feeling in his feet and hands. The only mercy was the Moth’s exhaust pipe, which ran along the port side of the machine, skillet hot, and warmed his painful left arm.
Wilson wheeled the Moth westward once more and returned to Freiburg to sketch out a new route around the mountains. Wilson’s change of plan, however, had the newspapers in a spin.
One reported, “No news has been received regarding the progress of Mr. Maurice Wilson, a member of the London Aero Club, who left London early yesterday morning to fly by stages to Mount Everest.”
Another wrote, “Inquiries of Paris and Freiburg-im-Breisgau, yesterday, for news of Mr. Maurice Wilson, the London Aero Club member who left Heston on Sunday to plant a Union Jack on Mount Everest, have drawn negative results.”
Yet another wrote, “Despite inquiries over a wide radius no information has yet been received regarding the whereabouts of Mr Wilson.”
Then, the next day, the Daily Mail received news from a source in Freiburg that Wilson was safe and well: “Mr. Maurice Wilson, the London Aero Club member who is flying to Mount Everest by easy stages, has given up the idea of flying over the Alps and intends taking the Marseilles route to Naples.”