Everest - The First Ascent: How a Champion of Science Helped to Conquer the Mountain (54 page)

15 He was rejected, having failed the medical exam.

16 In his autobiography (1969, pp. 111–12), Shipton stated that it was “clear that the Committee assumed that I would lead the expedition. I had, however, given a good deal of thought to the matter and felt it right to voice certain objections.” He admitted that “long involvement with a problem can easily produce rigidity of outlook,” and emphasized his dislike of large expeditions, publicity, and competitiveness in mountaineering. On the other hand, he offset his “objections” by reminding the committee of his unmatched experience of the mountain itself, of high-altitude climbing, and of the Everest venture, and did not convey an overall impression that he really wanted to quit.

17 Kirwan thought Hunt should be “deputy leader,” but did not push hard for this when he subsequently discovered that Shipton was strongly opposed to it (AC Archive, P5.5. Letter, Kirwan to Goodfellow, August 20, 1952). There are several detailed accounts of this period in the committee’s history. For instance, the “Assistant Secretary” of the Alpine Club, T. J. Blakeney, wrote a record in 1967. Although he was not a member of the Himalayan Committee and had no vote, he attended HC meetings and kept the minutes and wrote his record on the basis of notes taken at the time (these were later deposited in the British Library). The chairman of the committee, Charles Elliott, wrote a similarly detailed account (with the help of Basil Goodfellow) in the early 1970s, and Peter Lloyd, also a member of the committee, went through the papers again and wrote his own account in 1979 (AC Lloyd Papers P5 (9)). The various commentators agree that several of the members who attended the crucial committee meeting were still undecided. None of them knew Hunt personally except Goodfellow and Lloyd, who were not there. They were under extreme pressure to arrive at a decision about leadership, and therefore vulnerable to Kirwan’s advocacy. It does not seem to have occurred to them that having pressed a somewhat diffident Shipton to take on the role of leader, they would not then be able to impose upon him their own choice of deputy leader.

18 RGS/EE/75/HAC: Letter, Matthews to Kirwan, July 30, 1952.

19 TNA FD1/9042: Letter, Matthews to Kirwan, August 1, 1952.

20 TNA FD1/9042.

21 TNA FD1/9042. Letter, Himsworth to Kirwan, August 6, 1952. Himsworth wrote: “You will of course appreciate that before a body like the Medical Research Council could agree to participate in a project of the nature proposed, they would have to satisfy themselves that the proposed expedition would provide opportunities for scientific observation of such value as to justify them in diverting some of their resources to this end, and that the expedition would be so organised that such observations could be made.”

22 RGS/EE/75/HAC.Oxygen Subcommittee.

23 TNA FD1/9042.

24 This was a promise that was confirmed in writing by Kirwan, who accepted “our own obligation to take a physiologist on the preliminary acclimatisation expedition, who would subsequently move on to Everest and do what he could there within the physical limits imposed” (see TNA FD1/9042).

25 See Wylie’s note to Hunt, RGS/EE/68/2.

26 RGS/EE/68.2: Letter, Goodfellow to Hunt, August 12, 1952.

27 Ibid., Letter, dated July 23, 1952. Hunt went on to say that he had reason to believe the War Office would be willing to make him available, and urged Elliott to put in a request for him soon.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 See AC Lloyd Papers P5(3).

31 Charles Wylie told me how he accompanied Shipton to the meeting at the Alpine Club, expecting to discuss organizational and planning issues for the coming expedition. They were both surprised to see “leadership” on the agenda, as the matter was already settled. Wylie described their mutual surprise at being sent out of the room, and how after an interminable wait Shipton was called in, but came out a few minutes later white and shocked with the news that they had asked him to share the leadership with Hunt, with whom he did not feel he could work. Wylie agreed with Shipton that it was not a viable prospect, and he went back in to proffer his resignation. Later they left in a taxi, both shattered.

A common view of the sacking of Shipton was summed up by Jim Perrin, who wrote in 1985: “What emerges from close examination of relevant Himalayan Committee minutes and written submissions from its surviving members, is a bizarre tale of fudging and mudging, falsification of official minutes, unauthorised invitations, and opportunistic and desperate last-minute seizures of initiative by a particular faction. It is a perfect illustration of the cock-up rather than the conspiracy theory of history, from which little credit rebounds upon the English climbing establishment” (see Perrin 1985). More recently Ed Douglas 2003, p. 178, wrote: “Hunt . . . had been brought in as leader precisely because of his military experience, replacing Eric Shipton in a scandalously underhanded and shoddy piece of real politic which appalled Hunt as much as anyone.” Isserman and Weaver 2008, p. 276, wrote that Shipton’s sacking “bordered on bad faith.”

9.
Warts and All

1 RGS/EE/75.Reports on Apparatus: Letter, dated August 27, 1952.

2 All quotations in this section are from a taped interview of the conversation with Michael Ward at his home in Petworth in 2004.

10.
“It’s a Wonderful Life”

1 Cho Oyu Diary, April 24, 1952.

2 Ibid., May 16, 1952.

3 Lewis and Adah Pugh left India and came to live in London in 1940, where Lewis undertook legal work for the Privy Council.

4 Letter, Pugh to Josephine, June 3, 1942.

5 War Diary, October 5, 1941.

6 Letter, Pugh to Josephine, December 7, 1941.

7 Letter, Pugh to Josephine, 31 August 1942.

8 After the partition of Poland between Germany and Russia early in World War II, about 1.5 million people were deported from Poland, taken to Russia, and sent to labor and concentration camps all over the country. When Hitler broke his agreement with Stalin, by attacking Russia in June 1941, Russia became part of the “Grand Alliance”
against
Germany, and agreed to release all the Poles detained in Russia. Thereafter, more than 28,000 Polish evacuees from Russia passed through Tehran on their way south to the Persian Gulf. Prior to leaving, a large group of evacuees were collected together in a region east of the Caspian Sea, where typhus fever was prevalent. On the subsequent journey south, many who had so far escaped the disease now became victim to it. Arrangements were made for the reception of the sick in Tehran. The Poles, mostly soldiers, were treated at the military hospital, a combined Indian and British unit of 600 beds, 3 miles outside Tehran, called Central General Hospital, where Pugh worked.

9 Letter, Pugh to Josephine, April 27, 1942.

10 Letter, Josephine to Pugh, October 3, 1941.

11 Letter, Pugh to Josephine, October 13, 1942.

11.
All Possible Steps

1 Jan Morris (formerly James Morris) described Sir John Hunt in this way when I met her at her home in Wales in November 2006.

2 RGS/EE/68.2: Letter, Hunt to Goodfellow, September 13, 1952.

3 Ibid.: Letter, Hunt to Charles Wylie, September 23, 1952.

4 RGS/EE/68.Correspondence: Letter, Wylie to Hunt, September 27, 1952. Goodfellow also wrote to Hunt on September 27, 1952: “Your ideas conform closely to ours.” The commitment to take a physiologist to Everest was first mentioned by Wylie in a later letter to Hunt, dated October 3, 1952, in which he wrote: “The MRC has now asked officially for a second physiologist to accompany the party. We were previously committed to taking one as a price for MRC assistance” (see RGS/EE/68.2). Goodfellow informed Hunt of the commitment to take Pugh in briefing notes dated September 18, 1952 (see RGS/EE/66.2).

5 PP 14.8.

6 PP 35.4.

7 See RGS/EE/68.2.

8 L. G. C. E. Pugh Archive 46/15. Pugh was given access to a detailed account of the spring expedition from Dr. Chevalley, covering the period between May 19, 1952, at Camp Four, through to June 3, when they returned to the camp after their summit assault. It included descriptions of the terrain, snow conditions, progress of the climbers, how they felt, their illnesses and problems, their food and drink intakes, their use of oxygen, their sleep, etc. The paper also includes Chevalley’s summary of lessons learned. Dr. Feuz of the Swiss Institute for Alpine Research gave Pugh information about the changes and improvements made as a result of the spring experience, including the full provisioning list for the autumn expedition, and so on. Pugh was able to combine the detailed knowledge derived from the Swiss experience and previous expeditions with his research results from Cho Oyu, to provide a basis for predicting the requirements of the 1953 expedition, which John Hunt was able to incorporate into his planning. A list of questions Pugh prepared to ask the Swiss is in PP 39.2. Pugh’s report on his visit to the Swiss is in RGS/EE/90.Swiss Expedition Reports. In
The Ascent of Everest,
John Hunt admitted only to having made a whirlwind twenty-four-hour trip to Switzerland with Charles Evans on January 25, 1953, at which “we were shown all their [the Swiss] equipment and received a very frank and generous handover of their knowledge and experience.” However, this brief later visit, after the Swiss autumn Everest attempt, was made at a time when the British preparations were almost complete, and understates the extent of the help they gave.

9 RGS/EE/68.2.

10 TNA FD1/9042.

11 RGS/EE/99. Himalayan Committee Meeting of October 9, 1952, Appendix A, clarifies this point.

12 Ward told me that he felt it was vital to make sure that Hunt understood that he needed to take the physiology seriously. He also said: “I am quite happy to tell people what to do if I think they should learn. I have always been like this.”

13 See, for instance, Park in Berryman, Jack and Park 1992, p. 69, quoting from Shearman 1889, pp. 52–53; also, Wagg in Porter and Wagg 2006, quoting Woodgate 1889; and Allinson 2001, p. 20.

14 Scott Russell was married to the daughter of George Finch. He wrote a “memoir” of his father-in-law which was published as the introduction to a reissue of Finch’s book,
The Making of a Mountaineer
(Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1988, p. 10). The original book came out in 1924.

15 See Lunn 1957, p. 100.

16 See Hunt’s original plan in TNA FD/9042. In addition to the Cho Oyu Report, the other main sources for this chapter are the manuscript paper by Pugh, entitled “Everest 1953 Physiological Notes,” submitted to the committee shortly after he returned from Cho Oyu (RGS/EE/75.The Physiological Effects of Altitude); and the manuscript of a draft book about Pugh’s Everest work, which he completed in 1957, and revisited in 1978 (HTP; also different versions in PP 13.2, and AC E 36).

17 Pugh 1952, p. 35.

18 Ibid., p. 33.

19 Pugh opted for a four-week preliminary period because physiologists generally believed, and a number of studies confirmed, that acclimatization occurs rapidly during the first four weeks, then slows.

20 Their cooking stove was accidentally lost on the way up.

21 Pugh 1942, p. 11. The stoves had wickless burners protected by a cylindrical shield, inside which two water containers were heated by the hot combustion gases circulating round them. Pugh provided the general specifications, and the stoves were manufactured by C. R. Cooke of the Westcliffe Engineering Company.

22 For example, Pugh calculated that the allowance of kerosene needed for a small Primus cooker (“Primus 210”) to produce 3–4 liters of water per man per day from snow was approximately three-quarters of a pint, per man, per day (see HTP unpublished book 1957, p. 75).

23 PP 35.1: Letter, Hunt to Pugh, October 18, 1952. Pugh had been working with Charles Wylie on diet since mid-September 1952. He had already designed the meal plans for different phases of the expedition, and was in the process of consulting on nutritional values and vitamin scales with a professional dietician (Miss Grant of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). See RGS/EE/75.Diet.

24 See accounts of these studies in Pugh 1954a and 1954b.

25 To introduce this element of choice, the assault ration packs contained more basic foods than were necessary to meet caloric needs.

26 RGS/EE/75.Diet: Letter, Band to Hillary, December 31, 1952.

27 Askew 2004.

28 See, for example, PP 35.21: Note for Hunt entitled “Oxygen for porters to enable them to make repeated ascents to South Col,” and PP 31.1: Note for Hunt on Himalayan Diseases.

29 Pugh’s archive papers show he had begun working on boots before the Cho Oyu expedition. He arranged, early in 1952, that a Mr. Freeborn of the British Boot, Shoe and Allied Trades Research Association, construct for him two pairs of experimental felt boots for the Cho Oyu expedition. In September 1952 they wrote asking how the boots had fared (PP 35.11).

30 “The Everest Clothing Story” in
Uniforms and Industrial Clothing Catalogue
(1954), written mainly by Pugh, gives the best account of the process of designing the boots, clothing, and other equipment for Everest.

31 Pugh learned about clo values—a technique for measuring the insulation value of clothing, perfected by Canadian research workers in the war—when he was sent on a cold-weather cruise in the Arctic by the MRC in 1949 (see note 3, chapter 17), where the design of the Canadian Navy’s clothing assemblies for cold-weather duties, based on this system, struck him as “excellent” (see Belding et al. 1945).

32 PP 35.3. At Pugh’s behest, the fabrics were tested for wind resistance, tear resistance, and vapor permeability by Dr. E. Kenchington at the Clothing and Equipment Physiological Research Establishment, Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. On October 24, 1952, Pugh met Kenchington at Farnborough to discuss tent fabrics, groundsheet fabrics, and cloths for windproof materials. The fabric for windproofs would be sent to Howard Flint’s and Pugh would provide the design after the different types of fabric had been tested in the Alps (PP 35.3 and 4). Also PP 35.21: Letter to Pugh from the Royal Aircraft Establishment, January 9, 1952, discusses the results of the “walking in the wind experiments wearing different types of clothing and measuring comparative oxygen consumption.”