precious few men are so valuable that I would want to keep them in if they are determined to kick out Graham at this stage; and can’t see why anyone outside the party should have a word to say on the matter.2
Somervell cabled his resignation to the Alpine Club and wrote this:
I cannot conceive how the propriety of the Alpine Club could stomach such a low down trick after they had elected him in the full knowledge of his convictions … it is a dirty piece of work.3
As usual Hinks was involved, and it wasn’t to be the only dirty work done by Everest committees. Years later Shipton was sacked from the leadership of the 1953 expedition in a similarly underhand way.
It turns out that it was Bentley Beetham who had impugned Graham’s reputation, presumably because he wanted a place on the expedition. This is ironic, as he himself had avoided war service by hiding under the umbrella of a protected profession: that of schoolmaster. Mallory, it will be remembered, had voluntarily left his position as a schoolmaster to go to war. In the end Graham withdrew, feeling that his position was impossible. He was replaced by Jack Hazard, a bad decision that cannot have helped Hazard’s popularity. He had served in the war with Morshead, had been a strong climber keen on going to Everest, but his war wounds had never healed properly and his strength was diminished on the mountain, and he ended up ignominiously as a scapegoat.
Mallory and Somervell come out of the episode with honour, demonstrating a shared sense of fair play. However, Beetham’s shameful behaviour did not benefit him; he failed to achieve anything meaningful on the expedition. Finch was dropped from the 1924 team on dubious grounds after a ‘fixed’ medical. His rather dogmatic character had not endeared him to his colleagues in 1922. Odell would join them, plus the ‘experiment’, as Mallory called the 22-year-old Sandy Irvine.
Thurston Irvine was only ten years old when he saw his brother off at Liverpool Docks with the rest of the 1924 Everest Expedition. ‘Well,’ he proclaimed, ‘that’s the last we’ll see of him.’ This was horribly prescient. It was indeed the last his family saw of him, but not the last we will hear of him. His great-niece Julie Summers wrote an excellent biography of him, Fearless on Everest, after finding a cache of family letters, and in it he emerges at last as an interesting young man in his own right.4 He had impressed Odell on an Oxford University sledging expedition to Spitzbergen, and, like Mallory, he was an enormously powerful rower, another activity like climbing that needs strength and endurance. He was part of the winning eight in the 1923 Boat Race. The 1921 expedition had shown the committee the dangers of selecting men who were too old, in the shape of Kellas and Raeburn. Irvine was their experiment with a man perhaps a little too young.
There has been much speculation about the reasons why Mallory chose Irvine and not Odell on his last climb. Some Everest historians have even suggested a predatory homosexual interest, but there is no evidence for this. It suggests a misunderstanding of that part of Mallory’s nature. His experiments at Cambridge bear little relation to modern notions of homosexuality and were more like a crush. As for Irvine, he was known to be robustly heterosexual; he had had an affair with his best friend’s step-mother, which caused a divorce.
There were more likely reasons for Mallory’s choice. Odell was slow to get going in the morning, and he and Mallory clearly irritated each other. Irvine, however, was an expert at the oxygen apparatus, and keen to work hard. Here’s a letter from Somervell to his brother, Billy:
Mallory, although a schoolmaster, is able to lay aside the didactic manner of that profession, and is a very real friend of mine with much the same interests and outlook upon life. Odell is very nice, slow, tidy, particular, though a stout fellow, and when he is put to it, he’ll make good, I’m sure … Irvine, our blue-eyed boy from Oxford, is much younger than any of us, and is really a very good sort; neither bumptious by virtue of his ‘blue’ nor squashed by the age of the rest of us. Mild, but strong, full of common sense, good at gadgets (none of the oxygen apparatus would have worked had it not been for him, all the tubes being of porous brass which he has rendered non-porous with solder etc.). If ever a primus-stove goes wrong, it goes straight to Irvine, whose tent is like a tinker’s shop. He’s thoroughly a man (or boy) of the world, yet with high ideals, and very decent with the porters.
I was once in the position of being the youngest climbing member on an Everest expedition, and I remember exerting myself to become a valued member of the team. I enjoyed tinkering with stoves and generators, and putting myself out to help. I think Irvine was eager to please in this way. He was good at fixing the oxygen sets whereas Mallory was not mechanically minded. It is possible that as a schoolmaster Mallory simply enjoyed the company of young people. Odell, however, would be less biddable (he is described here as ‘particular’, and I have learned to be alert to Somervell’s exact choice of words).
Mallory’s choice of an oxygen ‘believer’ at this early stage indicates that he had already decided that using it gave him the best chance of the top. By the way, it is interesting to see that Irvine was ‘decent with the porters’. It is perhaps one of the reasons he was well liked.
They set off once more from Darjeeling on 24 March in two parties. Somervell describes how their last expedition began:
Started off in a car, then Mallory and I then walked together down the steep hill to Tista Bridge, taking short cuts where we could …
It must have felt like old times, and seems to have been when they had most fun:
March 31st … Down to a quaint and primitive Tibetan bungalow, where we left a whisky bottle filled with cold tea, with a note saying we had too much and this was left over. The second party completely fell, having not realised what it was.
April 1st – They dished it out all around before they discovered its true nature!
Here is Howard Somervell up to his practical jokes again. This sort of humour can sometimes contain a tiny grain of malice, so perhaps he was not quite as saintly as he might first appear. At least they all had a good laugh over it.
Problems soon intruded, however. General Bruce suffered from a recurrence of malaria and had to return to Darjeeling on 13 April. Losing his avuncular presence must have been a blow to climbers and porters alike. Norton was appointed overall leader, and Mallory, with his unequalled knowledge of the mountain, the climbing leader.
The Tibetan coinage had been changed from silver to copper as a result of the practice of ‘clipping’ (removing small shavings of the precious metal), and so ten mules had to be taken, laden with 75,000 copper coins, the money for the expenses of the expedition. In 1922 they had only needed three silver-carrying mules.
It is interesting to see how they lived. Each expedition member had a servant who would make their bed. Champagne (Montebello, 1915), the general’s 120-year-old rum, and quails in aspic were served. In fact, most of the champagne froze in the terrible weather, burst the bottles and was lost. Things are rather different now. We generally eat local food, and there are no personal servants. Champagne is taken, though, to celebrate success, and there is a unique way of serving it. I have found that because of the reduced atmospheric pressure the bottle erupts like a fire extinguisher when opened. The trick is to stand across the mess tent some feet away, and catch the jet of foam in a bucket.
Somervell was busy as usual, removing a decayed tooth from the mouth of a Tibetan porter with home-made pliers, and discussing modern art with Mallory on one six-mile section of the march. At Base Camp he would be conducting blood tests and overseeing the meteorological readings. He was also getting to know the others, and he describes another member in a letter to his brother. Hazard was something of a loner, and this proved to be a problem later on.
Hazard has built a psychological wall around himself, inside which he lives. Occasionally he bursts out with a ‘Gad, this is fine!’ – for he enjoys (inside the wall) every minute of the Tibetan travel, and even hardship. Then the shell closes, to let nothing in.
One sees all kind
s of ways of coping with the crucible of expedition life. The way one man clears his throat might irritate you beyond belief after three months. Some climbers joke, some become tetchy and some retreat into a shell – and these last are the ones that get scapegoated. In the course of many expeditions and film trips I have seen this unpleasant phenomenon more than once. After the poor goat has been excluded from the group, the air clears and the members get on with the business in hand. There is a historical precedent for this. Among sailors, another group of men thrown into battle with the elements, there was the similar phenomenon of the Jonah, a man who was singled out as the cause of all the ills on board the ship. They were occasionally tipped over the side on a dark night. Scapegoat or not, Hazard had the misfortune to be responsible for the mistake that directly affected their chances of a successful ascent that year.
The weather was abominable in May. Camp III below the North Col had been established with great difficulty. It is a tough hike from Base Camp at the best of times, and Mallory had an awful time with exhausted porters and freezing winds in the unseasonable weather. Shebbeare, the transport officer, was shocked to find out that Mallory had taken oxygen equipment up to Camp III in preference to warm bedding for the porters. A Gurkha lance corporal, Shamsherpun, suffered a blood clot on his brain, and the cobbler Manbahadur had both his feet frozen to the ankles. Both died later, victims, Wade Davis suggests, of Mallory’s growing obsession with climbing the mountain.
Further below, Norton and Somervell were encouraging another party of porters up the glacier. Geoffrey Bruce wrote: ‘Somervell … was always a great favourite with the men, and … had a happy way of getting the best out of them …’5 This relationship was about to become vital. Seven days at Camp III ‘reduced our strength and made us thin and weak and almost invalided, instead of being fit and strong as we had been during the 1922 ascent,’ reported Somervell. On 21 May he, Irvine and Hazard escorted a party of 12 porters on a new, safer route up to the North Col that Mallory, Norton and Odell had prepared, well to the right of the scene of the 1922 accident. They made it to the top safely, and left Hazard and the porters in Camp IV.
On 22 May it snowed hard, and everyone’s minds must have turned to the avalanche-prone slopes above Camp III. Then on 23 May:
Hazard seems to be coming down from the Col with his coolies – the best thing to do, as a bit more snow would have marooned them and it would have been a proper mess-up. Later – Hazard arrived with only eight coolies – that means four of them are still up there – we all felt it a great mistake to leave anyone behind; either all or none should have come down.
It was a proper mess-up. Hazard has been rightly castigated for leaving the men behind. One can only imagine what Norton must have thought, with the disaster of 1922 still in his mind and the realisation that a rescue must inevitably deplete his forces. But it was clear that something had to be done.
Somervell is modest in his description of the ensuing rescue, but it was a fine piece of work, reminiscent of the rescue he undertook on his second Alpine climb. The frightened men had to be persuaded to cross a steep slope of ice above a gaping crevasse. Norton described it thus:
Somervell slowly and laboriously made his way diagonally upwards and across: he punched big safe steps and continually stopped to cough and choke in the most pitiful manner. After one or two of these fits of coughing he leant his head on his forearm in an attitude of exhaustion, and so steep was the slope that the mental picture I have of him as he did this shows him standing almost upright in his steps with his elbow resting on the snow level with his shoulder.
Something was happening inside Somervell’s larynx that was to have repercussions on his summit attempt. The lining was becoming frostbitten with the great gasps of super-cooled air passing through to his lungs.
He climbed obliquely across the slope, roped from below by Norton and Mallory. 20 feet from the men the rope gave out. Somervell untied, continued unprotected, and grabbed each man in turn, passing them back to the others. But then there was a slip:
The first two reached him safely. One of them was across with us and the second just starting when, with my heart in my mouth, I saw the remaining two, who had stupidly started from the big shelf together, suddenly flying down the slope. A big patch of the fresh snow surface had given way and the men were going down on their backs, feet first, in an almost upright position. For one paralysing second I foresaw the apparently inevitable tragedy, with the two figures shooting into space over the edge of the blue ice cliff, 200 feet below; the next they pulled up after not more than 10 yards, and we breathed again … Somervell, as cool as a cucumber, shouted to me, ‘Tell them to sit still’, and still as mice they sat, shivering at the horrid prospect immediately beneath their eyes, while quite calmly Somervell passed the second man to us, chaffing the wretched pair the while – so that one of them actually gave an involuntary bark of laughter.
He grabbed them one by one and passed them back to Norton and Mallory.
Finally Somervell followed, after again tying the rope round his waist; and it was a fine object lesson in mountain craft to see him, balanced and erect, crossed the ruined track without a slip or a mistake.
The porters were all saved, and a repeat of the 1922 disaster averted. It was the right thing to do, but it had serious repercussions for the summit attempts over the following weeks, and in later years, Francis Younghusband suggested that Norton and Somervell might have climbed higher if it had not been for the efforts of the rescue. It exhausted all three climbers and now the inside of Somervell’s throat was badly frost-bitten by gasping in the freezing air.
They had a council of war at Camp I on 26 May. The weather had been awful, and the disaster of 1922 was still at the forefront of their minds. They decided that they dare not risk armies of porters on the treacherous slopes of the North Col, so three non-oxygen attempts were to be made by Mallory and Bruce, then Norton and Somervell, then Odell and Irvine. They would be staggered a day apart so that each party would be supported by the one below. Mallory was dismayed by the decision to dispense with the oxygen.
Nowadays their arrangements would look rather thin. We know a little more about avalanche conditions on the Col, and after studying the old photographs and actually climbing the route several times I think it is safer in modern times, possibly because of glacial recession due to climate change. Certainly the icefall on the south side of the mountain seems to be shrinking and retreating, too. Now on good-weather days huge lines of porters and climbers are to be seen hauling supplies up the mountain. High camps are lavishly equipped compared with those in the 1920s. Ropes are fixed by Sherpas all the way from the foot of the North Col to the summit to safeguard climbers. Communications are far better now on the commercial expeditions, with hand-held radios keeping expedition leaders aware of everyone’s location.
Things were far tougher then. Setting off a day ahead of Norton and Somervell, Mallory and Bruce had to turn back on 2 June from the first attempt when a porter fell sick at Camp V at 25,000ft (7,620m) and they failed to persuade the other porters to carry any further. Mallory was clearly saving his energy for an oxygen-assisted attempt with Irvine. They retreated to Advanced Base Camp, where Mallory asked Irvine to inspect the oxygen apparatus and select the most reliable sets. Then it was Norton and Somervell’s turn. Their climb is worth studying in detail as it would have been very similar to Mallory and Irvine’s last day, on 8 June.
The weather had certainly improved. May had ended with a hot day for them to climb up the Via Dolorosa to Camp III, and 1 June was a glorious day for them to climb to the North Col, with the snow settling down into good condition at last. It was cold, though, and when they met Mallory and Bruce the next day coming down the long slope from Camp V there wasn’t time to talk.
Somervell was using his Kodak vest-pocket camera with which he was soon to take the highest photographs taken to date:
I well remember the intensely cold wind, of which we got the full force
soon after leaving No. 4 Camp (the North Col). I tried several times to take a photograph of the wonderful early-morning view, but I could only expose my bare hand to the wind for a second or two at a time. The first time the gloves were off I got the camera opened but could not press the shutter-release. Gloves on again; hands warmed up, and another shot at it – no good; hands won’t work. The third attempt was successful and produced a photograph of the north-west shoulder of Everest, with the shadow of the North Peak [Changtse] on the glacier below.6
I have one of these VPK cameras, and I had to scout around to find suitable black-and-white film for it. Somervell would have used the Kodak A127 stock, but I had to make do with film manufactured in Slovenia. I took some photographs on the mountain in 2001 to see how the camera performed. Answer: very well, but it is difficult to operate. You have to squint downwards through a prism to see the image, and then click a tiny metal lever. The results were pleasing, and they looked just like the 1924 shots.
On the summit in October 1993 I was wearing three pairs of gloves and removed one pair to take pictures with my Olympus OM1. It took five minutes to knock off some shots of Steve Bell and the view, but in that time the index finger on my right hand was so badly frostbitten that I nearly had to have it amputated. It is cold up there.
Norton and Somervell got going at 9:00am after a night at Camp V, four hours after they woke up, and struggled to persuade the porters to continue. One imagines that these men had spoken to their descending compatriots the day before and were not encouraged. But Lhakpa Chedi, the stoutest of the four porters, persuaded the others:
One did hold back; but the others were at last persuaded to come on, although Semchumbi had had his knee cut by a falling stone and it looked a bit sore. I take off my hat to him, and to Narbu Ishay, the other starter; but I make a more profound obeisance to Lhakpa Chedi, a real sportsman with guts. It seemed a sad contrast when I last saw him, a waiter in a Darjeeling cafe, dispensing ices and creamy cakes to painted and ‘permed’ English ladies.
Last Hours on Everest Page 10