Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine

by Julie Summers

  Shebbeare, the transport officer, was a new recruit for the 1924 expedition and the man with whom Sandy found he had the most in common. Shebbeare worked for the Indian Forest Department and had experience of the local conditions and of working with the type of men that were to be the expedition porters. General Bruce was delighted to have someone of his experience and reputation as transport officer. He spoke very highly of him, in particular mentioning his sympathetic temperament which enabled him to get the best out of the men they had employed as porters. He had no previous experience of high altitude mountaineering but, as Bruce pointed out, that was not his job. In the event Shebbeare turned out to be an all-rounder and climbed as high as Camp III where he spent two days with Sandy helping him to make a rope ladder to ease the porters’ passage up the formidable ice chimney between camps III and IV on the North Col. He became the acknowledged ‘King’ of Camp II and Norton wrote of him in a dispatch to the Times dated 14 June 1924:

  It was decided that Mr Shebbeare’s knowledge of the language and of the psychology of the porters called for his presence on the lines of communication rather than at the Base Camp. Accordingly he was established as king of No. II. From that moment we at the higher camps never had to look over our shoulders or give a moment’s anxious though to our line of supply. Food for the Sahibs and porters, fuel and stores of all sorts, arrived smoothly as required, and, more important still, we knew that the comfort and health of the porters on the lines of communication were well cared for.

  Like several of the others, Shebbeare kept an expedition diary. In 1939 he lent it to the Government press in Kuala Lumpur and thus fortunately it survived the Japanese invasion of Malaya in the Second World War, when his home and many of his other possessions were destroyed. When he was released from the POW camp at the end of the war he was able to retrieve the diary and some notes from the Head Lama of Rongbuk. He made a transcription in 1948, which includes the typewritten memoirs of the Rongbuk Lama. In the explanatory note at the front of the diary, Shebbeare rather plays down the relevance of his own writings, but it is a fascinating document and sheds much light on the march across Tibet and brings a deal of humour to the story. Sandy and Shebbeare worked closely together as mess secretary and transport officer and his gentle manner and practical approach put Sandy at his ease. I sense that he felt more comfortable with Shebbeare than anyone else on the expedition despite the fourteen-year age difference. Shebbeare had a keen wit and a wonderful eye for observing detail, not only about the wildlife, which was his chief interest on the march, but also about the other members of the expedition. Once, at Camp II, he sent a note up to III expressing concern as to the whereabouts of Beetham who had been due into II the previous evening. He had spent three hours out on the glacier with a lamp and concluded that Beetham must be dead. He sent a note up to Norton which read, ‘If he left Camp III yesterday we’d better try to recover the body – if he didn’t he’s a bugger for not letting me know!’

  Geoffrey Bruce was the general’s nephew and another veteran of 1922. He had achieved a height record on that expedition with George Finch when the two of them reached 27,300 feet breathing supplemental oxygen and had been invited to join the 1924 expedition on account not only of his climbing achievements in 1922, but also on the grounds of his ability to get the Sherpas and porters to do what was required of them. He worked closely with Shebbeare during the march and frequently had to deal with truculent Dzong Pens and transport officials which he did in a calm but persuasive manner, always getting his own way in the end, but sometimes having to argue for hours with the locals. Shebbeare noted that the longest argument they ever had lasted for a full nine hours. Geoffrey Bruce was a close friend of Norton’s and he helped him write the dispatches for the Times. In a private letter that Norton wrote to members of the 1922 expedition after the deaths of Mallory and Irvine Geoffrey Bruce allowed himself some asides which give an inkling of the repartee that went on between him and Norton whilst composing the dispatches. He makes interjections saying exactly what he thought Norton meant rather than the more tactful phrases that were finally written. At twenty-eight he was the closest in age to Sandy and right from the start the two hit if off and I sense that Geoffrey Bruce was the kind of man who Sandy would have been very glad to have as a friend in later life.

  Hingston was the official expedition doctor and surgeon. He was also the expedition’s naturalist. Bruce was delighted with him and commented that he ‘came bursting with energy and enthusiasm to test every member of the Expedition with every terror known to the RAF authorities.’ He was of a cheerful disposition and had an ‘unfailing humorous outlook’. He was not expected to climb high on the mountain but in the event he had to go up to Camp IV to rescue Norton when he was stricken with snowblindness after his summit attempt. Hingston had his work cut out during the expedition. His first casualty was General Bruce whom he escorted from Tuna to Gangtok before returning to join the expedition and by the time he finally arrived at Base Camp on 11 May there were several very sick men for him to attend to. Despite the problems he encountered in his professional capacity, Hingston seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the whole Everest experience. On the way back to Kampa Dzong from Gangtok he wrote to General Bruce giving descriptions of his enjoyment of the road through the forests and adding that he had captured ‘no less than 300 different kind of bugs without even dismounting’. A Times journalist present at the Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society meeting held at the Albert Hall in October 1924, described Hingston in his article the following day as ‘the man who enjoyed it most’. As a naturalist, ‘every stone in Tibet was to him a potential goldmine for under it might lurk something really fascinating – such as a tick’.

  Captain John Noel was the expedition’s official cameraman. He was not part of the climbing party and worked independently from the rest of the expedition in that he ran his own outfit, organized his own porters, transport and runners, but he was a popular member of the team. He had accompanied the expedition in 1922 when he had set up a darkroom at base camp so that he could develop his photographs on site. In 1924 the whole photographic outfit was much more professional. Noel had approached the Everest Committee offering to buy the film and photographic rights for the whole expedition for a staggering sum of £8000, which, he and his backers believed, could be recuperated by future takings from the film he would be making. The Everest Committee needed to be asked only once. Such a large sum would in one fell swoop alleviate all their funding problems. Noel organized his team somewhat differently in 1924. There had been problems with developing photographs at Base Camp in 1922, since it had proven extremely difficult to keep the improvized darkroom tent dust free. This year he set up a darkroom in Darjeeling and had a series of runners between there and Base Camp taking films back for developing, thus enabling him to keep the Times supplied with photographs of the expedition as it progressed. Sandy, being a keen photographer, got on well with Noel. The two of them had similar interests in the technology of photography and Sandy more than once was called in to repair a broken piece of photographic equipment. Mallory was less than enthusiastic about the filming of the expedition but he liked Noel and wrote to Ruth from Darjeeling: ‘Noel’s movements are independent (i.e. he doesn’t belong to one or other party); he is more than ever full of stunts; the latest is a Citroen tractor which somehow or another is to come into Tibet – a pure ad of course / - (this may be a secret for the present).’

  Such was the makeup of the expedition, not forgetting Odell, Hazard and Beetham, that met on 23 March 1924. Everyone was full of optimism and the 1922 veterans each privately expressed the belief that they had the strongest possible team. Indeed Norton wrote later: ‘I don’t believe a stronger party will ever be got together for Everest.’

  The day after they arrived in Darjeeling Bruce called a meeting to hand out duties for the trek. Hazard and Sandy were appointed as the two mess secretaries, and spent a good deal of time receiving instruction about how to fulfil
their task ‘most unpleasant & difficult as I don’t know a word of the language’, Sandy observed. It was an obvious job to give Sandy, he being the youngest and least experienced member of the party, but it was the lowliest of all the jobs and brought him into contact with the porters with whom he foresaw much fun trying to talk in signs and pictures. He was allotted two porters of his own, neither of whom spoke a word of English.

  The baggage was due to leave on the Monday after their arrival and Sandy struggled to pack all his kit and clothing into the limited amount of weight that he was permitted. He was carrying a tool kit that weighed as much as his tent and this meant that he had to restrict himself to fewer clothes and other items in order not to overburden the pack animal. Each team member was permitted a pair of mules to carry their baggage and each mule could be loaded with 160 pounds of kit but that had to include their own tent, which weighed sixty pounds. This left 260 pounds to be distributed between suit and ice axe cases and Sandy’s very heavy tool kit and cameras. He gave himself quite a headache trying to arrange all his own affairs in time for their departure but eventually succeeded. He had another task to fulfil in Darjeeling which was to test the equipment that had been ordered in England. The first thing to command his attention was a new paraffin cooker, which he described as looking like an enormous brazing lamp. This, he concluded, ‘seemed very satisfactory but rather heavy’. He then examined the ladder bridge, the primus stoves and the tool kit, the box for which had already almost disintegrated, he noticed to his disgust.

  In addition to testing the stoves and packing and repacking his kit, Sandy visited Lady Lytton, the wife of the governor of Benghal, who happened to be Tony Knebworth’s mother. He wrote to Lilian:

  I’ve had one afternoon’s delightful tennis with Lady Lytton & family who wanted to know all the news about her son Tony Knebworth otherwise Lord K – who was out at Mürren all the time with us – I tactfully kept off the subject of Oxford as I believe he has just been sent down from Magdalen for playing roulette! Lord Lytton (or whatever his title is) is Governor General of Bengal & in Calcutta at present but the rest of the family & all the ADC’s at Government House are a very delightful lot.

  Lady Hermione Lytton, Tony Knebworth’s sister, was a girl of fifteen or sixteen in 1924 and was living at the time in Darjeeling. I wanted to know whether she had any memory of Sandy but she sent back a reply saying that while she had no clear recollection of Sandy she did recall being very taken with Colonel Norton. Hardly surprising: he was very dashing. Sandy was so enjoying his time with the Lyttons that he left his final packing rather to the last minute on the Sunday and did not get it done until 1.30 a.m. on the Monday when it was due to leave for Kalimpong.

  On the Monday evening, the night before the expedition left Darjeeling, Hingston carried out a series of medical experiments on the climbers to assess their physical and mental condition at 7000 feet. The tests were of necessity rudimentary as Hingston had no means to carry complicated apparatus on the trek. They were based on tests that had been carried out on RAF pilots and involved observations on alterations in breathing, circulation, muscular power and mental activity. Sandy could hold his breath at 7000 feet for twenty seconds longer than any of the others and his expiratory force matched that of Geoffrey Bruce and exceeded the others as well. When it came to blowing mercury up a tube and holding it he performed less well, only coming third. He made careful notes of his own performance and seemed satisfied with the results although he noted that he ‘got the arithmetic right but slow for me’. Mallory, it must be said, consistently outperformed all the others in the mental activity tests and by ever-increasing margins as the altitude increased.

  Just before they left on the Tuesday morning Sandy penned a quick note to his father asking him to send a letter to Spencer in London requesting reimbursement for the cost of the primus burners and the tool box ‘which incidentally has nearly disintegrated already’. There had been some confusion over the address that had been given for post and he was anxious that his parents should use the correct address which was given as Mt Everest Expedition, c/o Post Master, Darjeeling ‘& not Yatung Tibet as the Everest Committee informed us after we had sailed’. Keeping in touch meant much to the expedition members. Time and time again in their letters and diaries they refer to their delight or disappointment when the post bag arrived in camp.

  With all arrangements in place Sandy told Lilian that the trek was due to start in earnest: ‘We are splitting into 2 parties from Kalimpong to Phari as there are huts that will accommodate 6 Sahibs; each a days march apart, between the two places; which will be comfier than tents.’ From Darjeeling to Kalimpong it would be ‘7000 ft down & 4000 ft up – quite a good start for the 1st days work’. To his father he wrote ‘I believe its Sunday today. Do tell Grandfather that we have a Medical Missionary as well as a Doctor with us. We start about 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.’

  From the top of the pass for the first time the whole of the Everest system enters into close view. The fine highest mountains in the world are there in one grand coup d’oeil, west to east, Cho Oyu, Gyachungkang, Everest, Makalu and Kanchenjunga. Everest has pride of place in the centre immediately opposite, and is already displaying the great cloud pennon on its peak.

  E. F. Norton, published 17 May 1924 in the Times

  In the 1920s the only way to get to Mount Everest was to trek from Darjeeling. The Nepalese border being closed to foreigners the only possible approach to the mountain was across the Tibetan plain, a march of some 350 miles. There were no proper roads so that the assistance of motorized vehicles was out of the question. Everything the expedition would need for the march in the way of equipment and, for the great part, food had to be carried by pack animal. Norton had laid on a few luxuries for the party such as tins of quail in foie gras and four cases of Montebello Champagne. The route took the expedition from Darjeeling to Kalimpong, a hill station and the last town encountered before entering Sikkim; through the steaming valleys of Sikkim to the Jelap La pass 14,500 feet which is the border between India and Tibet. From there the route leads down into the beautiful Chumbi Valley to Phari and thence onto the Tibetan plain, at a constant altitude of about 14,000 feet, with passes to be crossed at regular intervals, often three in a day at over 17,000 feet.

  It was an enormous organizational feat and the experiences of the 1922 trek had lead them somewhat to modify the march, allowing for more time to cross the plain, but in the main the 1924 expedition took the same route as that of 1922. The expedition had some 3000 lb of food, tents and equipment which had to be transported on mules and ponies and the two transport officers Geoffrey Bruce and Shebbeare took charge of the luggage train. It was they who had to negotiate the frequent changes of transport required en route. General Bruce was concerned that he should get all his men to the foot of Everest in the best health possible. He described this responsibility as almost like dealing with ‘the crew of a university boat. They must be brought up to scratch without having suffered in any way from the arduous 300 mile journey across Tibet, or from degeneration in any form from the effects of a somewhat elevated route at a very early season of the year.’

  With their porters employed and all their personal packing complete, the expedition was ready to leave Darjeeling on 26 March. They drove to 6th Mile Stone in Willis, or buses, from where they proceeded on foot to Tista Bridge. Sandy was absorbing the new sights and impressions that he encountered: ‘Coming down from Darjeeling’, he wrote in his diary that evening, ‘we saw some most beautiful butterflies and got some wonderful wafts of perfume on a very hot breeze. At one point … we came across a fine lizard sitting on a rock with its tail stuck straight up in the air.’ From Tista they proceeded on foot and pony to Kalimpong. Sandy was amused that his pony did not even start at the sound of a huge tree being felled above them: ‘a most impressive sight and a tremendous noise but curiously enough none of our ponies showed any sign of alarm.’

  As far as I know Sandy had not had a great deal
of experience of horse riding and it took him a while to get used to this mode of transport. There were several occasions when he was lucky to escape with nothing more serious than a scraped knee. As he was so tall and the ponies so small he found that the most expeditious way to stop them when they ran away with him was to put his feet onto the ground and, in effect, lift the animal into the air. This slightly unorthodox approach to horsemanship was evidently of amusement to him and the other expedition members and he related the story of such an incident in a letter to Geoffrey Milling: ‘All our ponies work on the rocket principle – that’s how they get along up the hills so well! They are tough little brutes, mine ran away with me up hill today, I had to put my feet down & lifted it off the ground to stop it.’ To his mother he was rather more honest about the discomforts he faced when riding. It would appear that, like his father, he had somewhat delicate insides. He wrote to Lilian, ‘the pony shakes my bladder up rather & tends to give me the old trouble but I think I ought to get hardened to that soon. For that reason I have been walking most of the way so far.’ In fact, for a variety of reasons, he ended up walking a good two thirds of the entire march on foot. He eventually got the hang of his pony and had some lovely rides with Mallory and Hazard during the trek.

  Sandy was keen to give Lilian the richest picture he could of the scenery and the sights he was encountering. He wrote to her whenever he could find a moment, which was not often and frequently under less than ideal circumstances and sometimes had to break off mid-sentence: ‘- sorry if this writing has been rather shaky but my lad Tsutrum would insist that I had sweated in my stockings & they must be dried before the sun goes down so he has been taking off my shoes & stockings while I’ve been writing – well to continue …’ He went into great detail about all the arrangements for their overnight stays and was clearly impressed by the dak bungalows which were ‘very well looked after … this one has a lovely balcony with a superb view (if clear) & flower pots full of flowers all round & the whole place is most awfully clean’. He drew sketches in his diary and letters of many of the daks they stayed in, always making a note of the location of his own bedroom. His photography however he reserved for the scenery and the Tibetan people he met. He wrote to Lilian early on that he had kept a diary ‘so far which is pretty good work for me! Please keep my letters to fill out my diary when I get home.’ When he was in Spitsbergen he had kept a notebook and then written up his diary when he got back to Bergen after the expedition. He was clearly planning to do the same thing with the Everest expedition but had determined to write a somewhat fuller account on his return, hence the request to Lilian to keep his letters. His letters are fluent, descriptive and give a very clear picture of his state of mind as well as of the sights he saw and the experiences he enjoyed.