by Ed Caesar
Maurice might also have known some of the specifics of Victor’s first spell at the front line—a few haunting days in 1915. The First Sixth were moved into the front at Neuve Chapelle on May 5, 1915. This was the sector where battle had so recently raged, and whose casualties the troops had read about at Liverpool Street Station. These young men from Bradford were soon able to understand the grim truth of what so many names in a newspaper looked like. The dead were everywhere. Rows of British, Indian, and German bodies lay rotting in the spring sunshine. It was hot that May, and the bodies stank. Nevertheless, British search parties scoured the dead for useful items: cigarettes, rifles, money.
On May 8, Victor’s battalion readied itself to advance across no-man’s-land and attack the Germans as part of a general push. The plans, however, were not kept secret. In the First Sixth’s sector, the Germans raised a banner that read, in English, ATTACK POSTPONED UNTIL TOMORROW! The Germans were right. On May 9, the proposed and decidedly unsecret attack commenced with a heavy but short bombardment at 5:00 a.m. The commanding officers eventually considered this barrage insufficient cover to proceed with the entire offensive. The men of the First Sixth stood by their ladders, with shells that sounded like freight trains passing above them. They awaited the order to go “over the top,” but it never came.
The attack of May 9 may not have proceeded for the First Sixth, but the wastage never stopped, and on May 12 a shell came near enough to Victor Wilson to scald his leg. He was put on a stretcher and removed to a casualty clearing station, where he was bandaged. He then spent many nights among other wounded soldiers before being transported to a hospital in the French city of Rouen, where he spent two more nights in a hospital bed. Nearly three weeks after sustaining his injury, Victor boarded a ship bound for England. Back at home in Bradford, he would recover and then apply for an officer’s commission.
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Maurice might have known most of this already. His brother had endured some hardships, like every soldier, but his had been a lucky war—a short period at the front, a Blighty injury, a hospital ship home. What Maurice did not know, when he returned to Bradford in October 1917, is what had changed since Victor returned to the front line. What caused Victor such distress that his hands and eyelids now quivered? Why did he wake up sweating in the night?
That story began in January 1917, in the middle of the coldest winter anybody could remember, when the sodden feet of the men at the front froze in their boots. Victor had become a second lieutenant, the lowest rank of officer. Men of his age and background called him sir. His salary—up from a shilling a day as a private to seven shillings a day as a second lieutenant—reflected his new station. After his officer training, Victor was transferred to the 2/6 West Yorkshire Regiment, or the Second Sixth, as they were called. He sailed to France on January 6, 1917, with a battalion of reservist soldiers who had not yet fought in the war.
In the spring of 1917, Victor’s unit was twice ordered to attack the heavily defended French village of Bullecourt, alongside other West Yorkshire regiments and soldiers from the Australian Imperial Force. The first attack on Bullecourt, on April 11, 1917, was a fiasco marked by a profound lack of communication about the use of tanks—still a brand-new weapon—and hampered by scant artillery support. The Australians suffered huge losses that day. Of the 3,000 men of the Australian Fourth Brigade, 2,229 were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Victor led a company of Yorkshiremen to the outskirts of the town, where he was sniped at by Germans, but he was able to retreat to his battalion’s headquarters unharmed.
The second attack on Bullecourt, early on the morning of May 3, changed Victor irrevocably. The previous evening, he and his men had been marched to a spot named L’Homme Mort, or “the Dead Man.” There, at 9:00 p.m., they were given a hot meal and their orders for the following morning’s attack. The moon that night was bright. The battalion commander’s report noted the preponderance of enemy machine-gun posts that had not been destroyed by the previous week’s artillery fire. The omens were bad.
The attack began at 3:45 a.m. under what was known as a creeping barrage. The idea was that the British and Australian troops would be able to move forward behind a gradually advancing blanket of Allied shellfire. The plan was a failure. From the first moment of the attack, the British and the Australians were heavily shelled themselves and were fired on by German machine guns. The northerly wind meant that dust thrown up by the creeping barrage blew back in the Allied troops’ faces. Many British troops became disoriented. Some began to advance in the wrong direction. Officers behind the line could not see what was happening in front of them.
Victor walked forward, as troops fell all around him. He was one of the only British officers to occupy a German trench, but without enough support, and under heavy enemy fire, he was forced to retreat. During these chaotic minutes, the fragment of an exploded shell or a machine-gun bullet—the doctors could never decide which—tore through his left boot, entering at the base of his little toe and exiting at his instep. Somehow, Victor managed to limp back to the British lines, which were near a railway embankment. He was one of the few who survived. In the attack, 32 officers and 722 men of the Second Sixth were killed, wounded, or listed as missing. Most of Victor’s battalion disappeared in a morning: dry moorland grass to which somebody put a match.
Victor was treated with a field dressing at a casualty clearing station and eventually transported by train toward the northern French coast. He sailed back to England from Boulogne, suffering not just from the pain in his foot, but from shaking hands, insomnia, and dizziness. Once in England, a train took Wilson to a hospital in Manchester, where he spent two months. His foot healed quickly, but like many convalescents in this period, he contracted diphtheria. He also lost much of his hearing.
In May 1917, shortly after he was evacuated from the battlefield, Wilson complained of “pains in the head.” In June, a burst eardrum was described by an army doctor in Yorkshire as being a “sequitur of shell-shock.” The same doctor noted the tremors in Victor Wilson’s hands, and his nearly total insomnia. A month later, Wilson had a “nervous collapse” while making a weekend visit to his parents. When he was readmitted to another hospital, his doctors described him as suffering from neurasthenia: a weakness of the nerves. In September, his medical progress was defined as “nil.” In October, with doctors unable to improve either his hearing or his state of mind, Wilson was sent to recuperate with his parents on Cecil Avenue.
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How much of this story did Victor tell Maurice in October 1917? He might have told him every detail. The two were close before the war. On the other hand, Victor might have told Maurice nothing. Or, to save his brother the worst of his experiences, Victor might have hedged and told him a little of the truth, seasoned with some palatable lies.
This, however, is certain: whatever was communicated between the two brothers in that autumn of 1917, Victor’s condition told its own story. A handsome, beloved twenty-year-old had gone to war, and he had returned broken. Maurice Wilson had watched his city, and now his family, be torn apart by the fighting. He was weeks away from taking a ship, and then a stock car, to the same front line. Maurice was heroic in battle. But, given what he knew about what awaited him, he was heroic to even board the ship to France.
It is unsurprising that, at the foot of Everest in 1934, having already witnessed the strength of the mountain’s defenses, he chose not to return to Darjeeling, but cast his eyes upward once more.
CHAPTER TWELVE CHEERIO
• April–May 1934 •
At the Rongbuk Monastery, Wilson was drained from his near-death experience. He wrote that he “turned out more energy” on the one day he descended from Camp II to Rongbuk than in any other week of his life. The Bhutias now cared for him like the medical patient he was. As Wilson sat in the large Meade tent he had purloined from the Ruttledge expedition cache, the porters brought him his food, brewed his tea, and attended to his discomforts. Wi
lson’s eyes were so sore—an effect of the altitude—that he used stronger reading glasses, belonging to one of the Bhutias. There was nothing these men would not do for their Sahib. When the time came, and he was ready to move, they ran him a bath, fetching warm water from the monastery.
Wilson spent his first day back at Rongbuk in bed, sleeping and eating. On the second day, he and Tsering discussed a new strategy for another attempt on Everest. Tewang and Rinzing would climb with Wilson all the way to Camp III, at the foot of the North Col. Then, after a short rest at Camp III, Wilson would strike out for the summit on his own. His two Bhutia colleagues would await his return to Camp III, before accompanying their boss down the mountain.
Wilson spent two more days in bed. Eventually he regained full sensation in all his fingers and toes. He started to consider his situation more deeply. He must have believed that he was by now being tracked by the police in Sikkim, and possibly—if the word had been put out—in Tibet. In fact, his absence from Darjeeling had only just been noticed.
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On the evening of April 24, two British officials met for a drink in Darjeeling. One of those men was Frederick Williamson, a handsome and widely traveled British officer who served as the political officer of Sikkim. Williamson was a founder of the Himalayan Club. He loved to walk in the mountains, and to take photographs. The other official was S. W. Laden La, a man of Tibetan and Sikkimese heritage who had been educated in British schools in India and had risen to the role of superintendent of police in Darjeeling.
Over cocktails, Laden La and Williamson began to talk about how they might help Günter Dyhrenfurth, a skilled and influential German-Swiss climber, in his forthcoming expedition to the Karakoram. (Williamson seems to have been more interested in the spirit of adventure than the satisfaction of national pride: it was of no concern to him that Dyhrenfurth was not British.) Laden La knew all the best Sherpas and Bhutias. He suggested three names to Williamson of men who might help Dyhrenfurth: Tewang, Tsering, and Rinzing. Williamson then asked Laden La to call on the men the following day, to see if they might be available to help on the Karakoram mission. Naturally, when the policeman knocked on each of their front doors, there was no sign of the men.
After making further inquiries, Laden La wrote a letter to Williamson the same day, labeled SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL, which was full of minor factual errors but caught the drift of what had happened to the Bhutias:
I learnt that the above three coolies left Darjeeling sometime in the beginning of April 1934, with a European Sahib for Tibet with the object of climbing Mount Everest… all of them disguised as Tibetans. No one can definitely tell me who this European gentleman is.
Sometime in November last, Mr. Wilson visited me and told me that he came to India in an airplane with the object of flying over Mount Everest, but the Government of India stopped him from proceeding further than Purnea where he sold his plane and came to Darjeeling with the idea of climbing Mt. Everest which he said that no other living human beings could reach the top of it than himself. I discouraged and explained him how Mr. Farmer an American lost his life on Kanchenjunga. [Farmer, a man with no mountaineering experience, had disappeared on Kanchenjunga in 1929.]… He also told me that while in Germany he had a vision in which he was directed to proceed to India immediately by airplane and the air way was shown to him.… While at Purnea he had another vision directing him to proceed and climb Mt. Everest.…
From the above I presume that the alleged European gentleman may be Mr. Wilson and that he went with these experienced Tibetan Coolies to Mt. Everest.
I believe that this Secret Expedition must have gone towards Everest through North Sikkim.
Williamson made his own inquiries. He discovered that Wilson had indeed left Darjeeling. Nobody, however, had seen him in Sikkim, or anywhere else. Evidently, the priest disguise had worked. Williamson then sent a letter to the foreign secretary in the Indian government. Characteristically, he urged discretion, noting, “I do not think that any action is necessary till there are further developments.”
Williamson seems to have calculated that if Wilson had trekked to Everest to climb the mountain without permission, as seemed likely, there would only be political fallout between the British and the Tibetans if the event was publicized. There didn’t seem to be any point in raising the alarm just yet. One also senses in the British official a twinge of admiration for Wilson’s pluck and curiosity. Williamson was an explorer himself. The previous year, with his young wife, Margaret, he had walked over a treacherous high glacier pass from the Kingdom of Bhutan into Tibet.
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Wilson knew nothing of this development in Darjeeling. He must have suspected, however, that some version of Williamson’s letter had now been circulated. There was nothing to be done. Success on the mountain would be a powerful mitigation for flouting minor laws and transgressing national boundaries. Would these goons really punish an Everest hero, a man who had achieved the impossible? Unlikely. Failure on the mountain, meanwhile, would render political considerations moot. In short, Wilson had passed the point of no return.
Wilson recuperated fast. Every day, he felt stronger, although his eyes were still swollen. On Thursday, April 26, he wrote that he could hear the sound of rehearsals for a six-day festival that would soon take place at the monastery. Wilson wished he hadn’t left his cameras at Camp II. The next day he awoke feeling as good as new: feet and eyes improved, fit and strong. He wrote about the “many new muscles” he had developed since Darjeeling.
Wilson professed to be profoundly optimistic about the second attempt on the mountain because he’d now learned some of the rudiments of high-altitude mountaineering. He understood that crampons for his feet were essential on the steeper and icier slopes. There were no crampons at Rongbuk, as he had been given to understand. He vowed to find the pair he had discovered and then discarded near Camp II on his first mission. Wilson also recognized how useful the Bhutias could be, not least “to make something hot.”
As the festival approached, a bazaar sprang up around the monastery. Wilson went to investigate. He caused a commotion every time he walked anywhere outside his tent. In truth, he would have cut as strange a figure on Piccadilly or in Darjeeling: a sun-baked white man, as dirty as a mole, with sharp blue-green eyes, long hair, and a beard. He often wrote about wanting a haircut and a shave, to become more “civilised,” but he also reveled in his strange appearance. At the bazaar, he bought sugar, potatoes, and dried dates. The sweetness of the fruit overwhelmed him. Wilson also found more and more treats in the monastery’s stores, including a pair of felt-lined boots that he planned to wear on his next trip up the mountain. He spent days in the tent, making biscuits out of Quaker Oats and bread, smoking cigarettes, and talking with the “boys” about the “show.”
On the last day of April, Wilson met a “Lama” he knew from Darjeeling, who had burned the ends off two of his fingers in an act of penance. That night, there was a beautiful dance at the monastery, at which all the monks wore ornate masks. Wilson didn’t see it. He returned to his tent and allowed his three Bhutias to attend the dance instead. Wilson promised himself that on his return to Rongbuk from the summit of the mountain, he would make a movie with the monks in full regalia.
Wilson hoped to leave Rongbuk again in a few days. But Tewang became sick—Wilson believed he had contracted dysentery—and the second attempt was postponed. It was for the best. Wilson’s eyes had begun to sting again, and his face had swollen. He didn’t understand what was causing his symptoms, but he thought it might be connected to his diet. Too much Tibetan meat, perhaps. Meanwhile, the pain from his parachute jump returned to his knees. He asked the Bhutias to inquire in the monastery if there might be a room available for him inside. He wasn’t sleeping well in the tent. They found him a room, but on entering his new lodgings, Wilson spotted a rat. Nothing an old soldier hated more than a rat. He decided he couldn’t stay there, and so he pitched his tent once more outside.
Don’t suppose any evening goes by but you and Len speculate as to where I am, and what I’m doing. Good to think that in less than two months I shall be with you again.
As he waited days for Tewang to recover, Wilson became restless. He killed time—and indulged his curiosity—by strolling into the hills outside the monastery. Hermit monks lived in caves near Rongbuk. Wilson had been told about them, and he was fascinated. In a letter to Enid sent before his trek to Everest, he described stories about the cave-dwelling penitents, who were “praying day and night for the good of the world,” and who survived on only three or four cups of tea and a couple of ounces of wheat per day. Now Wilson visited one in the flesh. The hermit did not break his train of mumbled prayers as Wilson stood before him. There was power, Wilson saw, in this singularity of purpose, this abnegation of bodily comforts, this pursuit of enlightenment.
Wilson was spurred into action. He determined on the day of his walk around the monastery—Wednesday, May 9, 1934—that he would set out for Camp III on Friday, whether Tewang was healthy or not. (In fact, zero hour would eventually be moved to Saturday morning, which allowed Tewang to recover sufficiently to take part.) The following morning, a good omen befell the party: Rinzing found a huge tin of bull’s-eyes, boiled mint-flavored sweets that were popular in England, in the monastery stores. He took them back to the tent. Wilson was overjoyed at the unexpected luxury of being able to suck on a sweet.