Passing through Grenoble on the way back to Beaufort the temptations of civilised life were too strong, and we decided to stop over for twenty-four hours to get a bit of rest and Christian nourishment. After a copious meal and a good night we were once more bursting with energy and enthusiasm. Despite the prospect of stone carrying we put off our departure for Beaufort for another day, not for the sake of the flesh-pots, but in order to climb the Dent Gerard on the Trois Pucelles. We thought of starting up the Grange gully and then seeing if we could find a more interesting route. Now that I had become a climber of some experience the Grange gully seemed so easy that I couldn’t understand how I had almost met my end there. By contrast, however, the difficult new variation that we put up that day on the wall between the Dalloz crack and the Sandwich chimney was a real initiation for me into certain forms of artificial climbing, which I had never tried till then.[4]
Gaston got a long way up by the use of a good many pitons, but was then stopped by an overhang. He tried several times to climb it free but without success. I then had a try at it and greatly to my surprise got up, despite an annoying trembling of the limbs. New horizons began to open up from that moment.
We got back to Beaufort forty-eight hours late, to be greeted by Testo Ferry, the commandant of the centre, in unexpected fashion. This still-young man, who had distinguished himself by his courage in aerial combat, had a taste for dash and achievement. It was obvious that we appealed to him. With a twinkling eye and a suspicion of a smile at the corners of his lips, he told us off approximately as follows:
‘In the first place I have to congratulate you on your brilliant placings on the course you have just completed. It is thanks to men of your stamp that we are going to build a brave new France. As commandant of the Paturaud-Mirand Centre I am proud of you. But I regret that you have been awaited for two days now in Chamonix, where you are to join a climbing troop. Your late return has considerably hindered the proper functioning of the course, which is already in progress. In order not to prolong this situation you are to leave for Chamonix in a few minutes’ time, but in view of the fact that it would be a deplorable example to leave unpunished the grave breach of discipline of which you have been guilty, I have no choice but to be strict with you. Your penalty is to have your heads shaved – and I mean a complete tonsure. Given the urgency of the situation it will be impossible to inflict this punishment before your departure. I therefore order you to go to a barber’s shop either on the way through Annecy or on your arrival at Chamonix. I need hardly add that if these orders are not carried out I shall be obliged to punish you more severely.’
Far from plunging me into consternation this speech, subtly larded with the formality of the time and with a certain humour, raised me to heights of joy. Nothing could have delighted me more at that moment than to set off for my beloved range of Mont Blanc. As for my hair, to have it cut off was more of an advantage than a punishment for me. Although I was just twenty it had already started to moult liberally, and someone had told me that shaving the head would put off the evil hour – but in this as in so many other things life lost no time in showing me the extent of my naiveté!
At Annecy we had two hours to wait for the Chamonix coach, so we went off to the nearest hairdresser’s. At the time of our condemnation Gaston, as befitted an idealist above the opinions and flatteries of the world, had affected the noblest disinterest in his capillary system. Now, face to face with the secular arm, he suddenly lost his pride. At the idea of imminently seeing his thick, curly locks lying at his feet, he was thrown into confusion. Forcing a thin smile, he asked me shyly:
‘Do you think the old man would be satisfied with a very short brush-cut?’
But I replied:
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself at the idea of cheating like that? Orders are orders, and our duty is to carry them out to the bitter end. Boy! Bring the razor, and let it shine.’
So I sat there radiating pleasure and malice as I watched my head assuming the appearance of a billiard ball, while Gaston’s naturally long face grew longer still as his head was turned into a sort of tubercle covered in bumps and hollows. But his good nature soon got the better of him, and during the next few days he got everyone to finger his bumps, averring that one was the bump of mathematics, another the bump of business acumen, and so on.
Next day André Tournier, the guide in command of the Montenvers camp, had a bad few minutes as he watched two men climbing towards him whose shaven scalps shone in the gay morning sunlight like those of German soldiers! At that time such visits were apt to be worrying.
Situated next to the old Montenvers Hotel, justly noted for its magnificent site above the Mer de Glace, the so-called camp was installed in some disused stables that had been roughly converted into dormitories. Each Sunday some thirty virtual beginners would arrive from Beaufort for a one-week course in mountain climbing. There were theoretically five of us to look after the whole lot, but one was old and often tired or ill, and another would only lead parties on the very easiest climbs. For practical purposes there were only the three of us: André Tournier our chief, Rébuffat and myself. Despite his small stature, Tournier had Herculean strength, and his chest was of the proportions of a wardrobe. Aquiline, sallow, dark-eyed, with thick black hair, he might have passed for an Oriental if his deeply-chiselled features, stamped with decision, had not lent to his face rather the beauty of an ideal mediaeval knight. He was a man of exceptional character in the prime of life, and a truly fine guide into the bargain. Authoritative and violent, he was also upright and just, and by contrast with many guides he did not hold my urban origins against me. Having discerned my ability to outlast many born mountaineers, he treated me like a friend. It was the same with Rébuffat, under whose phlegmatic and almost smooth exterior he recognised the exceptional driving force.
As often happens in September, the weather remained immovably fine, and thanks to this we were able to take half our beginners every day on to some summit or other. In this way all of them were able to get in three climbs per course. The actual climbs were not very difficult but none the less called for a certain technique, and they were relatively long. As each of the instructors towed three or four beginners behind him, chiefly distinguished by a total lack of aptitude, it will be easy to imagine the slowness of our progress up routes like the Blaitière, and the patience required to get everyone to the top and back again in good order. We would set out at three or four in the morning and quite frequently not get back till seven or eight o’clock at night. It would have seemed a hellish life to a good many people, and it would have been natural if these daily-repeated climbs, carried out at a snail’s pace, had become excessively boring. On the contrary, however, I loved every minute of the time, which seemed to go by all too quickly. Doing these easy climbs in such conditions was after all a real adventure. Constant care was necessary, to say nothing of ingenuity. Getting a party safely up them bit by bit called for the concentration of all one’s powers, and gave me the sort of pleasure a child gets from succeeding in a difficult game.
I suppose we really amounted to nothing more significant than a gang of overgrown children delighting in the conquest of altitude by the force of our own muscles. Yet to see a companion arrive for the first time on a sunlit crest, his eyes full of happiness, seemed in itself an adequate recompense. Tomorrow he might return to the valley and be swallowed up by all the mediocrity of life, but for one day at least he had looked full at the sky.
It was in helping these uninspired parties of beginners, under the direction of André Tournier, that I began to love the guiding profession, and to understand its peculiar problems. I learned to make the most of the lay of the land, to be ready for emergencies at any moment, to foresee events, to keep the ropes unentangled, and how to make a group of clumsy beginners advance at a relatively respectable pace.
After these harassing five- or six-day weeks, we had earned a rest by the time Sun
day came round. Far from profiting by the opportunity, no sooner had Rébuffat and I returned the last novice to safety on a Saturday evening than we would be off up to some hut thanks to André Tournier, who took all the responsibility with his customary kindness and more than ordinary generosity. The following morning, caring nothing for the fatigue that weighed down our limbs, we would do a big climb as amateurs.
Despite our brilliant placings on the leaders’ course, although we were good climbers, we were not yet really excellent ones. Both of us had some of the qualities necessary to do the ‘grandes courses’, but in each of us these were to some extent cancelled out by equivalent weaknesses. Gaston was remarkable for his self-confidence: no doubt he thought, like Nietzsche, that ‘nothing succeeds without presumption’. Thanks to this optimism he faced his chosen mountain with extraordinary calmness and cold-bloodedness. Moreover, without being a genius, he was an extremely good rock climber. By contrast, however, he was deficient in some of the qualities which distinguish the mountaineer from the climber, such as a sense of direction and ease of movement on mixed ground and snow and ice. I was completely his opposite. I was rather nervous and lacking in confidence and, apart from occasional flashes, a very mediocre rock climber. But I had an unusual sense of direction and was completely at my ease on all types of high mountain terrain.
Thus our qualities complemented each other, but for all that we did not make up a really first-class team. The climbs we did together, such as the Mayer-Dibona on the Requin and the Mer de Glace face of the Grépon, were quite good for those days but not really exceptional. The proof of the pudding is that during these climbs all sorts of strange incidents occurred, and even taking into account poor conditions and equipment our times were quite slow. The speed with which a party does a climb is an almost exact gauge of its ability.
Rébuffat showed the greatest enthusiasm for these Sunday climbs, and seemed to enjoy them, but his ambition made him look on them a bit patronisingly: they were no more than something to be doing while preparing oneself for the really big stuff. For me the mountain world remained wonderful and terrible. Each of our climbs put me into a state of delicious anxiety, every enterprise was an adventure, and my mind was not at peace until the summit was finally under our feet. Our successes made me feel at least as happy and proud as I did later on reaching the most inaccessible summits in the world.
The Montenvers camp came to an end about the end of September. My eyes still full of the splendour of the high summits, I returned after three months’ absence to the more modest hills of Beaufortain. As before, I was sent to Roseland; and as our two old troops had been merged, Rébuffat went with me. Our life during the latter months of 1941 may not have called for efforts quite as prolonged and spectacular as those we had left behind, but it was still very tough and a great deal less inspiring. There was no more daily adventure, no more unceasing comradeship or joy of victory. J.M. was building two big chalets at Roseland, each designed to hold thirty men. The work was being done throughout by the youth corps itself, under the direction of the usual leaders. There were one or two professional masons to plan the work and put the finishing touches. Despite my rank as a climbing leader I only counted as a volunteer still because my eight months were not yet up, and I was set to work as a labourer. Well-directed and organised the work could have gone ahead in a happy atmosphere of creativeness, but unfortunately the prevailing climate was as morose and degrading as that of a prison.
We were heaped together twelve to an ordinary-sized room, and to say nothing of the discomfort or the difficulty of breathing in an atmosphere like a rabbit-hutch, any privacy was out of the question. The food was almost exclusively composed of bread and overripe boiled vegetables. On twenty-year-olds working eleven hours a day at nearly six thousand feet in temperatures often below zero, the effect of this diet was to induce a state of semicoma suitable neither to good feeling nor good workmanship. Worse still, the huge quantities of vegetable matter we absorbed had a highly irritant effect, so that it was usual to have to get up four, five, and even six times a night.
The dining room consisted of an old barn. Through the gaps in its walls the wind blew gaily, and during those autumn months it froze hard inside. The barn was in any case half a mile from where we slept and over a mile from where we worked, so that every day we were forced to walk six miles or more simply in order to eat and get to our work. Given the excellent spirit which prevailed in the J.M. we would no doubt have accepted this brute existence in good part if only the work had been productive and properly organised. But we were short of tools, and the actual materials arrived at irregular intervals and in no order of priority, so that we would often be kept waiting for hours in an icy wind, only to have to work subsequently at a positively Stakhanovite pace.
In such conditions the great goodwill which animated almost all of us quickly disappeared. Everyone tried to get away with the minimum amount of work, and the universal motto was ‘get out quick’. As almost always happens among men when conditions get too close to the survival mark, selfishness became pronounced, and the fine ideal of fraternity gave place to the law of the jungle, in which intrigue and mutual accusation flourished. I suppose that the terrible conditions in which the whole country lived at that time excuse a good part of this muddle, but how in that case can it be accounted for that in other J.M. centres the morale remained high, the food adequate, and the work productive? The responsibility must rest above all with the commandant of works, an arrogant, selfish brute, unfit to command. He took his sadism to the length of getting us up before dawn to do P.T. in the snow, clad only in shorts, while he directed us from his window, warmly clad in a fur-lined anorak. I remember that one day he made us roll around in eight inches of fresh snow. My rage was such that for the only time in my life I felt the urge to kill.
After three more months of this kind of existence I came to the end of my statutory time in the J.M. Nobody will be surprised that I was completely disgusted with the organisation, or that my health left a good deal to be desired. Far from wishing to sign on as an instructor, as I had originally planned, I had no other thought but to get home as fast as I could, and I got back to Chamonix about the beginning of January. While looking around for the means to execute a new project I took up my ski training again. Once again I went in for competitions, but with far less satisfactory results than the previous year. After the ordeal I had been through I needed about two months to get back into good physical condition, and just as I felt my form coming back I badly injured my knee.
With the return of spring the problem of earning a living once again arose, this time in acuter form because I wanted to get married to a girl I had met in the skiing competitions. I therefore pressed on with the daring project I had formed during the foregoing months and, with the aid of a small sum of capital furnished by my mother, rented a farm at Les Houches, a village six miles or so down the valley from Chamonix. I bought a few animals and set up as a farmer. Despite the Utopian element in my choice of this hard but worthwhile life I did not give it up until the Liberation, in September 1944, and then only with regret.
Having always lived in the country I had some idea of things agricultural, but I was far from being a professional peasant, and, as might have been expected, the running-in period was fraught with difficulties. During the first year my inexperience and idealism almost led to complete failure. I only avoided it thanks to the help and advice of my neighbours, M. and Mme. Tairraz, and also I think to sheer hard work on a scale not often contemplated even by the tough peasants of the upper valleys. It is a well-known fact that hill farming is harder and less profitable than farming in the plains. This is the reason why the inhabitants of the high valleys are, in ever-increasing numbers, leaving the land either for the cities, or for commercial activities connected with the tourist industry. In the Chamonix valley, however, the conditions are better than elsewhere. The soil is fairly fertile, and if, on the one hand, the valley-side
s are so steep as to render any cultivation out of the question, the floor of the valley compensates by being almost flat, making it possible to work with animals and farm machinery.
Today some of the more skilful farmers with the bigger farms can make a good living, without having to drudge, thanks to modern methods. But in 1941 such conditions, the result of continuous depopulation, did not yet exist. Although the Chamonix area was more suited to cultivation than a good many others, the tiny size of the individual farms made things very difficult. This state of affairs had brought about an immemorial poverty which forced the inhabitants to work by primitive and extremely laborious means.
At that time of food shortages, far from being deserted, the farmlands of the upper Arve were being worked right up to their remotest corners. I had the greatest difficulty in renting enough for four or five cows and a few acres of potatoes and vegetables. The fields I did manage to obtain were very expensive, scattered over a wide area, and in the case of a good third of them, steep and semi-sterile. From the outset, therefore, I was placed at a disadvantage relative to the farmer who inherits his own land, generally grouped around his farmhouse, and the position was made worse still by my technical ignorance. Fortunately my energy and liking for hard work, combined with my training in sports and manual labour, enabled me to pick up fairly rapidly the majority of agricultural techniques in use in the valley. Only the arts of threshing, scything and sharpening the scythe gave me real difficulty.
By unending work and ability to adapt to new conditions I managed to make up to a large extent for my technical handicaps, and I would no doubt have done quite well in the circumstances had I been less simple-minded, less full of ideals which had nothing to do with common sense. Thus a horse-jobber unloaded a donkey on to me for an exorbitant price, which turned out to be suffering from a disease of the hooves. I also engaged my friend Gaston Rébuffat as my farm labourer. Despite all the goodwill in the world, he turned out not to be gifted in farming matters, to the extent of being unable to shovel manure without being sick. Naturally his output was less than a third of that of an experienced man; and, as was entirely natural, he also had a propensity for disappearing into the mountains for two or three days at a time, which reduced the said output still further.
Conquistadors of the Useless Page 6