22 – EPILOGUE

When I had left Scott Base in 1958 I had given Fido and Dismal a special pat, never expecting to see them again, but fate, as usual, ruled otherwise. Bob Miller, that persistent fellow, had joined the Ross Sea Committee and pressed hard for a continuation of our successful field program. In August, only six months after our return, he dropped by. What did I think could be done next in Antarctica? A year later I was called to Wellington.
"We want a party to continue field work south of the Barne Glacier, Bernie," he said, "and we want you to lead it!"
It had looked rough country from the air and I said as much.
"You can do it!" said Miller, encouragingly. "Look what you and Richard and the others did, you've always been lucky!", a statement I could not well argue with. It was not a hard decision, academic life has its merits but academia is filled to overflowing with old‑maids of both sexes and once one has experienced the heady company of real men all else is anticlimax.
It was my first real experience of picking men and volunteers came world wide. Some strolled easily into the interview smiling with quiet confidence, large capable men who knew their worth and one could say inwardly "yes, him!" before he spoke and Miller and I were never disappointed. But then there was a different, more introverted type who outwardly seemed hesitant and diffident. One such seemed a slight figure until I stood alongside to find he was the same height as I. I took him reluctantly to find he had the metal of the best steel.
As we all toiled in Wellington, getting together the paraphernalia of a big expedition, sledges from Norway, gear from England, getting local tent makers to copy our polar tents, plaiting dog‑whips, they were joyous days. Best of all I remember the pride of strolling down the street to a small cafeteria for lunch, rolling along, laughing at the flow of wit, proud in the knowledge that these fellows were my men.
It was a curious sensation to spend a mere eight hours or so in a Super‑Constellation and land back in the old familiar territory. The poor dogs, due to some inept dog‑handlers had rarely been off the lines in a year and a half, and Fido and Co went berserk at my appearance. I like to think they remembered but perhaps they were only bored.
Without bothering to get any sleep, I pulled on harnesses, hooked them up to a blubber‑stained and wracked sled which could have been mine and we were away, a little ragged and a little less disciplined and not nearly as fit, but the same old boys. We stopped for a rest out on the Barrier and I sat on the sled. First Zaza, then Fido, Dismal and Joe crept closer and leaned heavily against me.
"Isn't it great, Boss, to be back on the trail? Just like the old days?" But then I saw before me the shades of maternal Alison who always looked as though her knitting was at hand, shaggy old Harbottle, the shy and wolf‑like Bowers, and Sis, she of the long and silky hair and I have to admit, my eyes misted over somewhat.
We had only three weeks to prepare for a long summer program, two of the alleged dog teams had almost never been run and some of the dogs had never seen a sledge. I also was to have two of the old T.A.E. Sno‑cats, County of Kent and Able, one of which was still mobile and met us at the ice‑runway, the other lay outside full of snow where Bunny and Co had switched it off. But then I had one of the best engineers I was ever to meet, Murray Robb! Both our T.A.E. aeroplanes were to be brought back by ship and I was to have exclusive use of both the Beaver and the Auster, but until they arrived in December, we had to rely on our own resources.
Discipline must have been in short supply during the winter as none of the four Ferguson tractors were operating and I pulled the distributor cap off one to find welded ignition points. There were spares and an hour so later with new plugs and points and an oil change I had one Fergie operating. By dint of working eighteen hours a day, Murray Robb had the rest going within three days, not that we needed them except for moving stores about, but the base itself could not operate without any mobile tractors. The base mechanic was an odd, dreamy type who seemed to have lost touch with reality.
Garth Matterson, one of my surveyors was only about twenty years of age and a born sledger but hadn't George Marsh always claimed it took three years to train a good dog‑driver? The second day I took Matterson out with my team, the third day we both took what was to be his team and a raw lot they were. It was back to the Tasman Glacier days again but by now I knew exactly what dogs could do and how they should behave, and I swore they would do it if I had to carry them! At the end of a day out on the Barrier they trotted home in reasonable style though I had no voice left!
On the next day I helped Garth get his lot started and ran back to my boys, tied down to a pole in the snow, and we were away!
On the day I tried the third team, it led to one of those experiences old sledgers like to talk about on quiet evenings over a glass, pipe in hand. The dogs were a harum‑scarum lot, with several three‑quarter grown pups less than a year old who had never been run and I clipped Dismal in the lead. It was hopeless to try to get them lying or even standing in place while in‑spanning the rest, though I swung a doubled‑up rope‑brake freely. I ran back to the sled and managed to cast off the anchor line and whooped to Dismal who had been looking this lot over with something less than approval. We roared off with Dismal pulling the entire sledge and half the so‑called team as well. A flick in the tail with the dog‑whip got the two "wheelers" pulling but the next six were beyond reach, one was straining off an angle of 120 degrees, one was heading for White Island and another was yelping loudly as he was dragged backwards.
Dismal, not unaware that he was doing 90% of the work and that there were a few back aft who needed a "clip o' the ear" began snarling over his shoulder, and then it happened. He suddenly stopped and flung himself at the "team". The first went down to a shoulder block, teeth snapped on a second who went down with a terrified yelp, teeth clanged on a third and it was all over. Before I reached the melee, expecting murder, eight dogs were lying, waving paws in the air and giving that wailing cry which means, "I surrender, I surrender!" Dismal cocked a leg over one in complete contempt and snarled an order and they scrambled up.
"Huit! You shower of bastards !" I cried and leapt for a runner as the sledge flashed by and minutes later I pulled out ski and kicked them on and we trotted past Cape Armitage to the usual encouraging noises of "Up now lads, huit now, come‑on boys, Pogo, you little sod, huit lads!" as we cantered along over the same snow we had as we left base in October of Fifty‑seven.
Out on the Sound, over and around pressure ridges and upended Bergy Bits, around the odd seal and stained diving hole and when an hour later I called "Aaah, Boys, lie‑down," most of them collapsed, the panting was loud and stressed, never had they worked so hard, but not a few had a gleam in the eye which meant, "isn't this fun?" and so it must have been compared to the boredom of the dog‑lines. Apart from a rare wheeling skua and a grind of ice along the pressure all was silent and my eye roved over the familiar distant mountains on the mainland, from far distant Huggins to Newall and the red bluffs of Granite Harbour and sighed contentedly to be home.
By the time we were back home one would have thought it was a veteran team trotting along, tails waving like toi‑toi in a nor‑west breeze. In the Base I tossed off my old anorak, now seeing its third season, and headed for the Mess and a cup of Milo - and the kettle on the stove was empty!
"I don't think th' Boss is pleased about somethin'," said an amused Robb, rocking back on a chair as I muttered imprecations.
"If I can train a dog team in a day, be Jeesus, I'll train some people to fill a kettle yet!" I said.

Eric Wedgwood, the Base cook, was one of those born expedition people that one would give an arm to have along on any difficult enterprise. The fourth time we went out with the dogs, Eric asked if he could come along.
"Great," I said. "but we want to leave early, about eight."
"I'll be there," promised Eric, "I've just got 'm baking to do, I'll get up at four and get all m' pastry done and the breakfast early for you, and all the house‑mouse will have t' do is clean up!"
Seeing this was from a man who had already "been down" a year and might be expected to be a bit stale, I was impressed.
We took two teams round the Point and found three bull seals along the tide‑crack under Arrival Heights and I knocked them on the head.
Eric whipped out a couple of butcher knives, honed them on a steel, put on an old anorak, bled them, and disappeared into the guts of a half‑ton seal. Forty‑pound lumps of seal came flying out and we tied over a ton of meat and blubber onto the sleds, the dogs howling their gratification.
"The one thing I really want t' do is a sledge trip with someone who really knows dog‑sledding," said Eric. "If y' need another man, say so!"
He was a nuggety sort of chap who reminded me of the descriptions of Stoker Lashly, but though he had a luxuriant beard, his hair was crew‑cut. I asked why?
"The way they fight round here!" he said indignantly. "We had a bit o' a brawl y'know, and I was doin' alright too but some sod got me by th' hair, so I thought, "If that's th' way they does it, I'll keep m' hair short!"
I finally got the story elsewhere. The radio operator was a large ex‑Navy Welshman called Phillips, not a particularly likeable man. In the Mess was a single, home-made easy-chair and one night Phillips had been sitting in it, but got up and left the room. Eric came in and dropped into the chair,
Phillips came back and ordered him out. Eric, not a man to be dominated, said "Stuff you, Boyo!"
Whereupon Phillips threw him across the room.
Whereupon Eric gave a roar of rage, knocked Phillips down and tried to choke the life out of him.
Now there are two positions which may be taken in this kind of event. One is that if two gentlemen wish to kick the daylights out of each other, it is of no concern whatever to the bystanders, providing they do not wreck the furniture or spill the drinks. The other is, that as in a good dogfight, a responsible citizen does not idly stand by and see good dogs maimed or killed, he gets in there, fists, feet and whip handle and breaks it up. There was once a book called "Husky" written by an Australian called Bob Dovers. To most dog‑men, Dovers was not a driver's cast‑off mukluk as he describes dog‑fights to the death without end, which he seemed to never bother to stop.
Arnold Heine had wintered over that year and Arnold did not care to lose a perfectly able radio‑operator and being used to breaking up dog‑fights, jumped in boots and all. Unfortunately, techniques which work with a 100lb husky do not always work with a 200lb enraged, ex‑fourth cook off the "Queen Mary" whose death‑grip was not to be broken.
"I didn't have anything heavy enough to stun the bugger with," said Arnold. "But he had good long hair, so I wound a hand in it and heaved and off he came!" Eric considered he had been cheated of a decisive victory, but I understand Phillips did not try to push Eric or anyone else out of a chair again!

On the fifth day we went hill climbing round Castle Rock and a day or two after that, with Charlie Wise who had wintered over, on the third team, and Eric, who found a substitute cook for a few days (being a dedicated dog man), plus Roly Taylor, down to study Penguins, and Athol Roberts who was to be Base Leader, we were off to Cape Royds.
It almost rivalled our early winter trip of two and a half years before. Round Hut Point we ran into the inevitable blast of drift and wind coming over the Peninsular near Glacier Tongue. After half an hour of this I stopped, Garth's dogs were right behind but where were Charlie Wise and Atholl Roberts?
The sun flickered through, and suddenly, there was Pogo followed by the rest of the dogs, then the sled, then Charlie and Atholl coming direct towards us through the murk from the north!
"Where are you going, Charlie?"
"Evans of course. Isn't it this way?"
"Not unless the wind has turned round!" we said unsympathetically.
Charlie was really the world's most imperturbable man. He never wasted a second on regrets. We once saw a plane crash;
"Gee," said Charlie. "You know, that'll make a fantastic dog kennel!" There were bodies lying about and an American officer stood with tears rolling down his face, "My God! They're all dead!"
Charlie rolled one over with a mukluk, "Aw, I dunno, there's some kick left in this one ! You, get a sled!
"Er, what?" said the officer looking stupefied,"
"Get a bloody sled when I tell you," snarled Charlie.
"Yessir!" said the Colonel, and departed at a run.
Charlie was the sort of person that if they ever drop the atom‑bomb, would look around enthusiastically at all the useful burnt brick still lying about. Unfortunately it was hard to get him to take lesser problems seriously!

The next day the other two were slow at getting ready to leave Cape Evans where we had camped on the beach and I decided it was time they learnt not to hold people up, so Eric and I departed on time reaching Royds 55 min. later with a stop under the Barne Glacier cliffs for a picture.
We moved into Shackleton's Hut and brewed up. Three hours later there was no sign of the others and I grew worried and walked out on the point. No sign! Then I heard dogs yapping. Out in the tumbled pressure off the Cape were Garth and Roly, tangled in immense ice blocks. I sang out to them and waved to the easy snow ramp at Backdoor Bay and soon they were spanned out. Where was Charlie? They didn't know.
"OK," said I. "Give them another two hours and we'll hook up and go search, damn their useless bloody hides!"
We were carrying our sleeping bags back to the sleds when Charlie and Athol appeared, quite unperturbed.
"Would you mind telling me," I said carefully, not knowing whether to laugh or get mad. "How in hell it can take you five hours to do a 55 minute trip?"
Charlie giggled happily. "Well, we had a capsize leaving Evans, didn't we?" he said cheerfully. "Then the dogs bolted after we had unloaded the sled, eh? Then we had to walk about ten miles out into the middle of the Sound to catch them, eh? ha. ha! Real nice day for a walk! Great view out there!"
"Do it again and I'll kick your arse!" I said sourly. "There's a brew on!"
We put the radio on Shackleton's old coal range and called Base, sipped some rum, announced that Radio Royds was about to play some light orchestral music and Athol and I played them a mouth‑organ duet. Shackles' old hut always was cold, and even with two primuses on we could not get the temperature above zero and our mouth‑organs tended to freeze!
We made a fast run home but I made sure Charlie never got more than half a mile behind! As we passed Inexpressible Island, I remembered labouring along up to the parked American Skymasters five years before, with the poor little overloaded American dogs and cheered the boys on. How different it all was now! We swept up the dog‑lines in style and for the first time it began to seem possible that we might launch a full field operation on three weeks preparation. Murray Robb, Jim Lowery and others were out to welcome us back and we gambolled up to the mess in a burst of exuberance.
"You must have had a good trip," said Robb enviously, he rather preferring dog travel himself.
"Oh, jolly good!" I laughed, and then, unconsciously imitating John Lewis, Bunny's pilot, "Bloody good, first class!"

The dogs were thin and needed a seal diet. The three which Eric and I got lasted a few days and then I sent Charlie out for more. He came back with one.
"That's not much use," I said. "We want three or four. Go out again tomorrow!" He came back with one again. Why?
"There just aren't any more." he said. I didn't believe it.
From the pass a bit north of Castle Rock, I sat on the sledge with the glasses and scanned the tide cracks radiating from Turtle Rock. And counted 45 seals! "I'll thump the bastard!" I said.
"Charlie!" I said, back at Base. "How many seals did you bloody get?"
"Aw, one. There weren't any more!"
"Then how come I counted 45 round Turtle Rock?"
"Aw, yeah? Really? They must have come up in the warm afternoon sun, eh?"
I picked him up by the shirt front and nailed him against the wall of C hut.
"Charlie, old son," said I, banging him against the wall for emphasis. "When I tell you to go and do something," (Thump), "You will bloody do it," (Thump, Thump). "Or you and I," (Thump), "Will have bloody words!" (Thump!)
"Yeah, yeah !" he said affably. "If that's the way y' want it, sure! Do you mind puttin' me down please?"
I think I lost that one! Fortunately perhaps as it was largely Charlie who saved my life a month later!
We worked like beavers tightening White Whale lashings on sleds, packing rations, checking tents and radios, all of which should have been done by the winter‑over party. Garth helped for fifteen minutes and made an offer:
"I can do this, you have got more important things to do!"
"Are you sure, all these white‑whale lashing have to tightened and screwed, the line lashings frapped and tensioned with aero‑dope, the wire lashings tensioned and soldered, not easy !"
"Sure!" said he. An hour later I dropped by. A wipe of solder was being applied to a perfect wire lashing. I shook the sled, it twanged like a violin. It was a far better job than I would have done, and he didn't even have an Esquimaux grandmother. I went around muttering, "If only George could see this!"

I became aware of the warmth and stillness of the air. It was still October. I sniffed the air and looked around. Perfect weather. Too perfect. I checked my pocket aneroid, twenty nine inches and falling.
I went to the garage to a grease‑stained Murray Robb immersed in a Sno‑cat.
"Have y' ever seen a churn like that?" he said proudly, waving to a gleaming 500 cubic‑inch V8. "Just listen. Ticks like sewin' machine!"
"I think it's gunna bliz!" said I.
Robb was one of those rare diamonds who knew when to laugh at danger and when to take it seriously. He went to the door and looked at the yellowing sky and sniffed the warm air.
"Be jeesus, y' could be right," he said seriously. "Reminds me of bloody hurricane weather. Right, I'll get all the tractors inside!"
I checked the aneroid again. 28.5 inches. Blizzards are not that predictable, some come without a drop in air‑pressure and some don't warm up until after it has been blowing 60 knots for a day or more. But looking south there was a grey wall of drift thirty miles out. I went the rounds after first having a quiet word with Athol Roberts.
"All hands turn to, lash up and stow, close all doors, get all gear inside, get half a dozen fuel drums into the covered way, seventy knots in two hours, move your butts," and every man turned to with a will. Except one.
"Y' mad!" said he, unwisely, "Th' weather's perfect!"
"For that you can pick up all the gash lumber lying about outside!" said I cheerfully. "We don't want it coming through the windows. Move it!" Then I heard a soto voce aside from Eric;
"Do what Bernie says or I'll bloody drop y'!"
Thirty minutes later wind was beginning to keen in the aerial rigging while gusts of drift splattered the Base and men worked with more urgency.
Two hours later it was gusting ninety and my reputation was made!
We sat inside partaking of a wee dram as the huts rocked.
"How the hell did you know this was coming?" said one of the winter‑over party.
"Aw, hell,!" said Robb seriously, "Y' know how 'tis. When y' been down awhile like Bernie 'n' me, y' can tell. The skuas fly close to th' ground, th' penguins start walkin', the seals go down their holes an' things like that!"

Murray Robb was an astute observer of character and late one night he related the following story:
"Y' remember I came down for th' winter just before y' went home in '58? Well, we had a technician called Gavin for the winter, a real wierdo‑lookin' bloke, long hair, straggly beard, thin and round shouldered, y' mind the type?
'Ullo, Ullo!' I says to meself, 'What piece o' uselessness have they lumbered us with this time?' Well, y' know how it is, y' keep an eye on th' crew t' see how they're shapin' up and it isn't long before I sees old Gavin has got more to him than first met the eye, as y' might say. He had to put up a radar dome and come hell, highwater or snow, there's old Gavin workin' away on days most of the other boys are inside in th' warm. A fair hand with th' tools he was too and not backward at givin' a hand where needed and I starts thinkin' to meself,
'Mebbe I wuz wrong!'
'Well, durin' th' winter he gets one o' them "Dear John" letters and it fair broke him up! It seems he wuz engaged to quite a nice‑lookin' girl and what got him was some sod movin' in while he wuz stuck down here and couldn't do a thing about it.
'That was th' time I walked inter one o' th' Yank huts and found this bunch havin' a great time listenin' in t' Gavin tryin' t' talk her out of it on th' radio. They thought it was hell of a funny. Would y' believe it? Well, the feller with th' radio didn't see it my way and we had it out and I put 'im down on th' deck from which he did not rise for some considerable time I might say! No more trouble in that direction.
'O'course Gavin wasn't exactly the aggressive type, in fact y' could call 'im the ultimate wimp and he was no hand at fisticuffs at all, but when he went home next summer who should he run into, in the University library of all places, but the bloke who pinched his girl! So without a pause or 'Excuse me' old Gavin fair set about 'im in no uncertain fashion, we'd both a loved to a seen it, I hear it took half the coppers o' Dunedin to drag 'im off.
'Well the girl and this bloke got married soon after and went to Queenstown for th' honeymoon, and would y' believe, old Gavin got sent there by DSIR on a job and run inter them on th' main street! Well! No hesitation at all, Gavin got stuck in again then and there and fair wiped the town with 'im. The locals reckoned it was th' best bit o' stoush seen since gold‑rush days!
'A touch' o' adversity, that was all it took, t' bring a bit o' real character out in th' boy!"
To this day I smile when I remember this story, because I know what it was or rather who it was that "Brought out a bit 'o character in th' boy" and so will any reader that knows men and reflects for a moment. Gavin would have died a thousand deaths rather than risk a cool look and perhaps a suggestion "If y' don't like it why don't y' do somethin' about it then?" from a man he admired so much.

One of our own party was to get a "Dear John" letter before the summer was out and in fact, with the exception of that gentle giant, John Robertson, few of the expedition men I knew were very popular with women, in fact many never married, partly because at least half died violently before reaching the age of 35. The flower of my father's generation died on Lone Pine, of mine, scattered throughout the remote places of the world.
I once asked an intelligent female why women did not share my enthusiasm for some of the men, who seemed to me the salt of the earth.
"Too hard to control!" she said decisively. "look at some of the men who follow you round, they fair send shivers up my spine!" which confirmed my opinion that women have no judgment.
"In fact," she went on archly,"You're a bit frightening yourself!"
"Oh, come!" I muttered weakly.
"It's a fact!" she went on with relish. "I'll never forget the first time I saw you, we were up for a ski-week and it snowed and about twenty people were sitting round the hut, and, yes I suppose it was in a bit of a mess. You came in with some of those awful henchmen of yours, threw your hood back, glared round the room and said "Why is this hut in such a bloody mess? Why aren't the dishes done? Why is there no wood?" and within minutes the whole hut were scurrying round like a bunch of frightened rats!"
"Well, of course!" I said, in wondering tones.
"But who are you to tell people how to behave?" she went on with typical female lack of logic. "I mean if people want to be sloppy and live in a mess it isn't your responsibility".
"But of course it is," I said in bafflement, "I mean what is the world going to be like if the older chaps don't see that the young ones behave in the right way?"
I shook my head over this for days. When I was young Harry Ayres once chewed me up for not leaving enough dry firewood in Douglas Rock Bivouac and I was quite shaken. It turned out another party had gone through the Copeland a few days after and had used my supply. Harry found this out and came to me and apologised to my vast relief. I never could bear Harry to think badly of me, little though I cared for most people.
On the ski-week she spoke of, by the third day the hut was short of food and John Robertson and I decided we must walk three miles down the track and pack in more. There was a young sixteen-year-old who had been making himself obnoxious, showing off in front of the girls and refusing to pull his weight.
I nodded to him. "You can come too," I said.
"Eh? What? Me? No way, I'm not going out in that!"
John Robertson's eyes positively twinkled. "I think you had better be quick in getting your boots on," he smiled. "It's cold out in bare feet!"
Our young man quailed. Four of us swung off down the path in the knee-deep snow, gust of wind blowing showers of powder off the beech trees, our footsteps silent, amid black trunks rising from the immaculate white. We loaded up with about 100lbs each with a lighter load for our "Sherpa Bill" who when he found he was in an adventure with the "Big Expedition Men" was so proud of himself it was comical. We laughed and talked as we wended home of other days in other snow-filled valleys round the world, and as we relaxed in the ski lodge over teas we could hear our "Sherpa Bill" surrounded by a gaggle of admiring teenage girls doing some not so quiet bragging, "- and do you know what Mr Robertson said? He said that in the Karakorum his porters were such a poor lot he used to get them all a cup of tea and breakfast to encourage them to carry! And do you know he said that I was a better porter than a Hunza!"
From then on he was a changed young man. No, I hated to think what would happen if the older chaps stop showing the young ones how to be men. Now of course we see the result on every hand.

Robb himself, at the age of thirty four, had acquired a female friend in the shape of a nurse who had worked in London, been to Covent Garden, and rather fancied herself.
"Isn't old Murray a great chap?" I said to her once enthusiastically.
"Well, yes," she said doubtfully, "But not very intellectual though !"
"Murray Robb," I managed to get out when I had calmed down enough to speak coherently, "Has more intellect in his little finger, than you have in your whole fat, useless body!"
Luckily I was immobile in a hospital bed at the time, or I might have given her a piece of my mind! In my mind, he was named Peter, because he was a rock on which waves might break in vain.

Once I was passing through Timaru and called at his home and spoke with his mother who had a glint in her eye.
"Murray's been trawlin' off the Nuggets in the "Norseman"" she said. "I've just been talkin' to him on the radio, he's loaded to the gunnels!" "Surely he didn't say that on the radio?" said I, knowing something of the habits of fishermen.
"O' course not! If he had, every trawler from Havelock to Oban would be steamin' for the Nuggets at this minute. It's the code, you see? I asked what he got and he says "A few cases o' rubbish!" That's the code, he's loaded, he'll be in port soon, come to the dock and meet him!" We did and a cheery sea‑booted Robb pointed to the hold jammed with a hundred and twenty cases of prime cod. A freckle-faced youngster of about eleven or twelve was struggling with mooring lines.
"This is me mate, Jimmy!" said Robb, waving at him. "Jimmy allus comes down to help me raft up, don't y' Jimmy? Throw a clove hitch over her like I showed y', Jimmy. I'll be up home as soon as I've run Jimmy home!" and Jimmy looked up with such a look of adoration towards his hero, that I reflected that one of life's great disappointments one was how often men who had the instinct of perfect fathers so often had no children of their own.

Murray ran a couple of taxis on the side and sometimes drove himself. "We pick up quite a bit o' trade from the docks."
I ventured to guess that seamen returning to their ships drunk could be difficult.
"Aw, occasionally," said Robb, carelessly. "Fact, I picked up a couple o' rough hands a few weeks back who looked to pay me off in th' time‑honoured way, with a thick ear!"
"What did you do?"
"Aw, I grassed one o' them and the other paid up quick enough!"
Robb's inimitable dialect still had something of the softness of the Highland accents of my own Strath Clutha, all of fifty miles away from where he was born. We have none of the harsh rolling RRR's of Sutherland, the reason being that Gaelic, spoken by many of the original settlers, has no voiced consonants.
"I don't suppose, at the age of sixteen, me and me brothers could have said "Hullo" to a stranger to save our lives," he said once. "But mind you," he added reflectively, "We wuz bloody good shots!" which described my own upbringing so well that I chuckled for hours.

Robb and I went out to the airstrip to pick up our replacement Cat‑driver, Lt. Tom Couzens, straight out of a Centurian tank in the Korean war. It was a whiteout and there was no sign of the C140 Hercules. I went into the Ops hut.
"Where the hell is the plane, has she turned back?"
"Naw, she's on the ground, taxiin' in by radar!"
Then I could hear the motors and as I stared, out of the murk, four propellers appeared, like the Cheshire cat's grin.
Presumably behind them was the rest of the 'plane! There were not many passengers and we soon picked a tall, erect young man who could only be an Army Officer.
"Couzens? I'm Bernie Gunn."
"Thought so, bloody marvellous to be here, I've got all my kit, can we go?"
By the time we climbed into the Cat both Robb and I knew we had the kind of man we both wanted. We roared off into the drift with visibility a few yards, cracking jokes. The Hut Point road was flagged and marked with signs like, "Pancho Gonzales, he like hot Tamales!" but we soon left it and swung in a wide curve south and east round Cape Armitage. Only milk could be seen ahead but I could see Robb occasionally polishing the left window and could see a dark patch away on our left, the rocks of Cape Armitage.
"You know, I don't want to seem a complete fool, but how the devil do you chaps know where you're going?"
"Aw, y' know how it is," said Robb, polishing the left door window again. "When y' been here awhile like Bernie 'n' me y' get a sort of built‑in direction finder!"

Having several Army people did pose problems however. With most of the lads, (excepting Charlie of course) a hint like, "I suppose we should make sure so and so has been done," and it was even so. Captain Peter Hunt was the Chief Surveyor and I wanted to know what weight of survey gear we had to carry and dropped several hints without effect. Then I remembered, civilians like hints, Army like orders.
"Peter!" said I in my most Colonel-ish tone. "I really must have the total weight of the survey equipment you require, can you give me the figures by, say, 1400 this afternoon?"
"Righto, Sir, no trouble at all, I would say about 65lbs at this point but will confirm at 1400." and he damn‑near saluted!

Over meals we discussed dog‑food and fuel consumptions and made plans but on sledging techniques I was adamant, to begin with we would follow traditional practices.
"Why?" said someone, probably Charlie.
"Because that was how the Eskimos taught Watkins who taught Rymill who taught Bingham who taught Kevin Walton and Butler who taught George Marsh who taught me! And it works!"

Over the years I was to be on many expeditions, five to Antarctica, more to the Himalayas, to the Andes, the Rockies, Labrador and Northern Canada, Mexico and Guatemala, even a little civilised pottering in the Alps and sailing Round the World, but this was probably the best Expedition I was ever to be on. Perhaps because it was my show, no one else could have my dogs shot, stop us doing work we knew had to be done or be obstructive in any way, but then in addition the men had a cheerful exuberance that had seldom been seen on T.A.E. where generally a Scottish dourness reigned.

Within three weeks of arriving we were away South, out past Corner Camp and on past Scott's One Ton Depot, twenty‑seven dogs, me, Garth Matterson, with Charlie Wise and Captain Peter Hunt on the third team. The first day we did sixteen miles, the second, twenty, the third, twenty two, not bad for the most untrained teams that have probably ever set out. For the first few days the unfit dogs tended to gulp snow and be sick, so I began taking a short rest every half‑hour and they soon picked up.
Cherry‑Garrard took three weeks to reach One Ton camp with dogs in 1912, we took half as long and we had reason to hurry. Behind us Murray Robb, Lt. Tom Couzens, Jim Lowery,(the second Geologist) and Dick Goldschmidt, (another surveyor), were following hard behind, doing fifty miles and more a day over rough sastrugi, towing six tons of fuel each at twice as good a petrol consumption mileage that the Crossing Party had ever achieved.
It was the best sledging trip I was ever to do, and the last dog journey ever to be done down over the old route over the Barrier.
The second night out was still and calm, the sun low to the south and Erebus still standing high and steaming silently to the north as I went out to look over the dogs. My sledge was left neat and tidy, the others in some disarray. I pulled ski out of the snow and slid them between sled runners, looped the lash‑lines over the flaps of the canvas sled tanks, put stray ration boxes back on sleds. Outside the other tent was a ration box, open. I put my head inside the tent, Charlie and Garth lounged replete after a meal and made cheerful noises.
"Look, you chaps," said I. "Don't leave your gear in such a mess, I've done up your sledge tanks etc, don't leave them flapping in the breeze again!"
"Aw, they won't hurt!" said Charlie who had picked up sloppy ways.
"Not until a wind gets up, then a broken ski will come flying through your tent, it will take two hours to dig out the lost ration boxes, your tank flaps will be buried in ice and you will have to cut them out, and it will take an hour to dig out your trace because you didn't coil it in on the sled!"
"Aw, yeah!" they said uncomfortably.
One doesn't get popular making these kind of remarks, but if one doesn't and the whole journey becomes a shambles one isn't popular either. From then on gear was always left shipshape and Bristol fashion.

The next morning as we lashed sleds, a wall of murk appeared a little west of south and I pointed it out.
"We'll carry on a bit and see how bad it is," said I.
Privately I was thinking, "Let's see if the boys can take it!"
The drift was soon whirling twenty feet in the air and the wind piping thirty, gusting forty knots. The sun intermittently filtered through and I could still see the sun‑compass. After an hour I called to the dogs "Aah, lads, lie down!" and they obediently stopped. I pinned Dismal with an ice axe as Garth's dogs appeared out of the murk a few yards away. I ran back.
"How do you find it, want to stop?"
"Aw, no, its Ok, carry on as long as you want!" Charlie and Peter Hunt were similarly willing and I groped back to my sledge feeling ridiculously pleased, I have known men freeze into an absolute panic in a forty knot wind with visibility three yards.

After four or five hours my dogs would tire somewhat, after all Fido and co were probably six or seven years old by now, and I would wave Garth to the front. His younger team were shaping well and I was not going to make the mistake of always leading. A man who has always been in second place has not learnt a great deal.
Daily, Erebus sank lower over the horizon to the north and we passed over the point where Scott, Wilson and Bowers lie beneath the snow. One could only feel melancholy, they were truly great men.
Then we swung south‑west and in a few more days McClintock was coming up to the west. At the end of the day. I would raise an arm, the three teams would swing left and span out en‑echelon with the two tents close together.
One could walk forward, taking an ice axe to pin down the lead dog, taking the wire span as one went. Within 15 minutes the dogs would be spanned and fed, and the tent propped up. Within thirty, the inside man would be offering tea to his partner, there is a joy in doing something so simple, well.
To be sure, there were little incidents. One day, Garth, that veteran sledger of four weeks experience, was in front and subsiding crust panicked his dogs. They slewed round, throwing him off his ski, and bolted for home, past me. My team raced beside them for half a mile before a dash could be made for the other sledge and the brake!
"I say, you haven't lost something have you?" I said as Garth came panting up.
Then one day I saw bobbing objects on the eastern horizon, with puffing trails of smoke, the Sno‑cats Able and County of Kent had caught up. We swung left and an hour or two later joined them in their camp, where tents were neatly pitched in the shelter of the great four‑tracked vehicles and sleds piled high with fuel drums. We were all quite exuberant as they had made fantastic time, but Jim Lowery refused to be distracted as he sat in the shelter of a sno‑cat taking a gravimeter reading and gave us but a brief grin and wave. An American seismic traverse party had set out a week earlier for the Skelton and within a week had broken three springs, a couple of drive shafts and a fifth wheel and had to have an emergency airlift of petrol!
In the morning the Cats refuelled, Tom gunned the big V8 engine of County of Kent and she spun round, snow flying and a track fouled a tow‑bar.
"God Almighty!" said Robb to me. "He got carried away, he thinks it's a Centurion! Tom!, Tom, y' bloody fool, that isn't a tank you got there!"
"Oh, God!" said Couzens winding down a window, "Sorry, I got carried away! I thought I was back in the old Cent!"
Couzens did have some absorbing tales. He swore the Cent was by far the best tank in Korea and once for a bet, shot his way through the Chinese lines, round a mountain and back home via the American lines. The latter were not impressed as he roared over all their communication cables and severed them!

Within three weeks we reached 80 deg south and a point reached by Scott, Wilson and Shackleton in six weeks in 1901 with starving dogs, and incipient scurvy.
I navigated by my old bubble sextant and daily plotted our position. I did not usually bother to do a late position line for longitude but took a half hour break at midday, plotting sun elevations continuously to get local noon exactly. I had my own sight reduction tables, no more of this eternal adding of logarithms to solve spherical triangles! Captain Hunt broke out his much more accurate theodolite and daily placed us about 150 miles further west. I made rude noises!
After a week of this, Hunt was protesting the maps must be in error!
"Not that much!" said I.
Then one day, as he muttered to himself over calculations, light dawned.
"Oh ho! I see it all!" he cried. "We're in the Southern Hemisphere, aren't we ?"
There is a little thing called The Equation of Time which is added or subtracted according to which hemisphere you are in!

One day as we moved west with the Cats slightly in front, we came up a rise to find them parked and the four men standing staring.
"It looks like the best tank trap I ever saw!" said Couzens. It was in fact the identical "Chasm" that Scott Wilson and Shackleton had been stopped by at their "Depot B" in 1901, a great chasm in the ice only a few miles from the land but cutting them off completely from it. They encountered it again down near the Shackleton Glacier a hundred miles south and in fact because of it had never actually reached the coast. I had read of it, but had not seen it from the air in 1955 (because we were flying directly above), and had piously hoped it either was no longer there or was not continuous.
The next day we sledged south in poor visibility but after a few miles the chasm was still with us. The Sno‑cats were right on our tails and looking impatient. The question was, was it safe to use the faster Cats for reconnaissance? We had not seen a single crevasse east of the Chasm and there was no reason why there should be one.I left the dogs and walked over to Able.
"Murray!" I said. "You and Tom go twenty miles south and then turn east, if necessary on foot and see if you come to the end of this damn' thing. It should just be a shear caused by the ice of the Barne pushing the Barrier away from the coast. If it is still there, go another ten miles and recce. If its clear, camp until we catch up. Charlie will sit on the radio. We'll go back and see if we can force a crossing where it divided into a "Y" back there. Got it?"
"OK!" said he as if I had asked him to get the milk. He waved an arm and the Cats growled on.

We went back and threw up a tent and left Charlie on the radio. We were able to force a way over the first chasm, though the dogs might have had to have been partly carried but the second branch was a different matter. Holes one could drop a sky‑scraper in alternated with up‑ended blocks of similar size. We shook our heads and went back to be met by a cheerful Charlie.
"Murray says it comes to an end twenty miles south. They are past it and gone into the bay!"
"Into the bay?" I said sharply. "I told them to camp, not go taking risks in there."
"Well, Murray reckons it's easy going!"

We hitched up and left, following their tracks. Twenty miles south the tracks swung west and sure enough, there was no sign of a chasm. The ice surface was hard, almost icy, dead flat without a single crack. By this time it was midnight, a cold southerly breeze blew and we went on and on. I looked back, the third sledge had only one man! I stopped and walked back to see the fourth man running from behind.
"Bloody silly of me!" said Captain Hunt, "Fell asleep on my ski and fell over. Sorry!"
"Look!" said I. "We've done 33 miles, that's a long way. Do you want to camp?" but there was a chorus of denials.
I walked back to my sledge feeling pleased, they were good chaps.
Half an hour later I stopped for a rest as the dogs were getting tired and Charlie came scuffing forward. He stood awhile kicking the flat frozen snow.
"Been a crool 'ard winter." he said in Farmer Giles' tones. "Dunno what we'll do for feed come spring, might have to resow the pasture!"
"Do it in a wind," I suggested. "You'd get a good spread of seed!
"My oath!" said Charlie. "Throw a handful in the air in an eighty knotter and it'd reach Scott Base!"

We went on and suddenly the surface rose a hundred feet or more and the Sno‑cat tracks wound up a valley caused by ice subsidence. There were no cracks but the ice was definitely aground and this was no place for machinery and I cursed Robb and his venturesome nature more than once. However, we came to the top of the rise and from there right into the rock bluffs of the land about ten miles away, the surface was flat and there were no signs of crevasses. A mile further on in the bay, now called Couzen's Bay, the Sno‑cats were parked.
We threw up tents beside them and I strolled about giving the dogs a double feed and patting them.
"Good lads!" I said. "Thirty seven miles in a day and three hundred out of base, good boys!" and never a reproachful look did I get.
I never saw them again.

The Gods sat on Mount Ida (or perhaps, on McClintock or Albert Markham) and smiled on the efforts of the mortals below but one day Aphrodite approached Zeus.
"The arrogance of these men sickens me. See their conceit, they make no offerings to us, neither the burnt thighs of cattle nor the best flipper of seal. I pray you, Father Zeus, let me send such dangers their way that even the heroes of old could not surmount! I would cast them to the greatest depths and darkest places!"
Zeus, King of the Gods who ever wished to please his favourite daughter, sighed and said, "So be it!"
And there within sight of Albert Markham and McClintock, our luck finally ran out!

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