Conquistadors of the Useless

by Roberts, David, Terray, Lionel, Sutton, Geoffrey

  When the French were nice and close, the enemy, who was very far from being wiped out, opened up with machine-gun fire. In the ensuing rout a good many dead were left on the ground. After this mortifying reverse our brass-hats decided to use more up-to-date methods. It now seemed to them that the only way of getting into the Tura was to blow off the heavily armoured doors with charges of plastic explosive and bazooka shells. The 1st Company of the 15th was entrusted with this difficult mission, and a number of us were withdrawn for special training behind the lines. But Stéphane, a fervent patriot and born fighting man, was also a most humane leader and a convinced Christian. He seemed in no way inclined to get his men minced up for the sake of a few old walls when it was obvious that the war might end any day. He spoke of the mission without enthusiasm and openly criticised the way the spring offensive had been conducted. Our special training was dragged on as long as possible, and one fine morning the observation posts suddenly noticed that there were no signs of life in the fort.

  Down on the plains of Italy the overwhelmed Wehrmacht was fleeing northwards, hoping to form new lines in the Austrian mountains or even to ask for asylum in Switzerland. The units on the Alpine Front, not wishing to be cut off from the main body of their forces, had suddenly abandoned their positions. Without waiting for any orders, Stéphane launched his company in pursuit. Marching far in advance of the rest of the French army and fighting side by side with the Italian partisans, we managed to keep contact with the enemy almost as far as the outskirts of Turin. The war ended for me a few kilometres outside it, or to be precise at the village of Robasomero.

  When one of my companions brought me the news of the armistice I wandered off along the edge of a wood, sick at heart. Everywhere spring was coming to its full splendour, and the air was full of the slightly listless warmth of the Italian countryside. A thousand barely perceptible sounds peopled the night, and far above the infinite worlds of the stars twinkled softly. Through renewed contact with the vast peace of nature which had been tie joy of my childhood I sought to recover my peace of mind, which had been profoundly troubled by the events of the day.

  My group and I had gone to the help of a strong contingent of ‘Garibaldini’ who had clashed with a company of S.S., but we had only arrived at the end of the battle, too late to affect the issue. The Germans had been wiped out to a man, either in the fighting or by being shot afterwards. Among the prisoners were two boys of twelve or fourteen, sons of a black-shirt officer who had sought refuge with the S.S. By the time I arrived these two wretched victims of a world gone mad had been delivered up to the tender mercies of the local women, who were pulling their hair, scratching their faces, and booting them savagely, although the children’s piteous looks were enough to have melted a heart of stone. Outraged by these brutalities, so unworthy of folk who were supposed to be fighting in the name of civilisation, I instantly protested, only to be cursed for my pains by several big strong men in red neckerchiefs, with enough grenades, pistols and daggers in their belts to frighten an army. By their threatening manner I gathered that they were telling me to mind my own business. They then went into a huddle for some time. Finally, taking no notice of my indignant protests, these comic-opera heroes kicked the two boys up against a wall and hosed them with sub-machine guns. The murder was so brutal and swift that I could not believe my eyes, but stood frozen with horror. To my dying day I shall remember the crazed glances of those innocent victims. That day it came home to me truly that the modern world, for all its luxuries and its machines, had not yet emerged from the state of barbarism.

  Northern Italy greeted the French troops with wild enthusiasm, and for us who came first there was absolute delirium. We marched through villages on carpets of flowers. The end of the campaign was like a huge, continual fair. But our great allies did not seem to be particularly pleased by the presence of French forces in the Italian valleys, and our armies were progressively moved back until they stood behind our own frontiers. The Compagnie Stéphane was quartered at Ailefroide, in the heart of the Oisans massif.

  I was finished with war. During these eight months in arms I had lived a life of absorbed action, dedication and sincere comradeship which had lifted me above the sordid considerations of everyday existence. Only the blood shed by my friends and the beastliness of some men had dimmed the brightness of those days, but the splendour of the mountains had purified such stains. We were all volunteers, joined up for the duration of hostilities only. Now that these were over we should have regained our normal rights, and our retention in the army was quite arbitrary. Despite our devotion to the company, which had become a sort of second family, most of us wanted to get home and take up our positions in society. But the high command, which needed soldiers to occupy the French Zones of Germany and Austria, and, even more, to fight in Indo-China, was unwilling to let us go.

  Recruiting officers appeared on the scene, extolling the charms of the Mysterious East; but, for all its promise of adventure, not many of us were tempted by the idea of a colonial war, in which the word patriotism took on a more equivocal note. It was only later, after the occupation of the defeated countries, that a few of us who had achieved more or less exalted rank chose a military career and went off to fight in Indo-China. Some of these were never to return, among them my childhood friend J. C. Laurenceau and Captain Stéphane himself.

  It soon became obvious that we were not going to be demobilised for months, and that before long our battalion was likely to be posted to Austria. During a war there may be some largeness of purpose and nobility about an army, but in peacetime it easily sinks into stupidity and meanness. This is such a truism that garrison life has always been an easy subject for slapstick humour. Stéphane was perfectly well aware of all this. A great leader of men in war, he took the trouble to remain so in quieter times when the world was slowly sorting itself out, by keeping us busy in the least futile ways available: singing, sport, and climbing. Thus I found myself doing many of the classic Dauphine routes that June, despite the snow which still lay thickly on the summits. While other units grew rotten with boredom and debauchery, our company, thanks to its leader, continued to lead a full life made all the better by our warm camaraderie.

  The shrewd and humane Stéphane had also taken note of the fact that many of us were wasting time in the forces which could be put to better use elsewhere, and he went out of his way to get the older ones demobilised first. Thus Laurent Cretton, a true patriot who, although he was over thirty years and had three children, had always volunteered for missions, was able to get back to his family and his work; and Michel Chevallier returned to the direction of his family business. As I was only twenty-four I had no hope of early demobilisation, but Stéphane, against his own wish to keep me for the mountain training of his company, got me posted as an instructor at the Ecole Militaire de Haute Montagne, which was being formed again at Chamonix. In this way, he had worked it out, I would be able to satisfy my passion for the mountains while also being united with my wife, the real victim of this military interlude.

  The E.H.M. was, and so far as I know still is, designed to teach the elements of mountaineering to officers and N.C.O.s of the Alpine units, and also to produce experienced mountain instructors for the Scout Sections. For rather less obvious reasons it also takes a modicum of students from various other branches of the services, even the navy and the air force. In 1945 the school had two types of instructor, civilian and military. Apart from the pay and the uniform there was nothing to distinguish one from the other. I am very ready to admit that the commanding officer did his best to spare us the multifarious vexations of garrison life, and that apart from our work we enjoyed almost complete freedom; but our position was scandalously unfair.

  Even allowing for the ‘hostilities only’ volunteers who were forced to continue serving under the colours, the army was short of qualified instructors. It had therefore engaged, at a substantial salary, a number of professional civilian gu
ides. Many of these were middle-aged men whose course in not volunteering for the last phase of the war was perfectly understandable; but others were youngsters who, perhaps rightly, had preferred to remain civilians rather than risk losing money and possibly their lives for the honour of France. Thus, by a distressing paradox, the army punished those who had served it faithfully by refusing them their freedom, while rewarding with comfortable salaries those who had refused to put themselves at its disposal. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction!

  1. Translator’s note. Armée Secrète, was a right-wing resistance organisation, and Francs Tireurs et Partisans, left-wing.[back]

  2. Translator’s note. Climbers use the word ‘exposed’ to mean vertiginous, exposed to the void, unless otherwise qualified.[back]

  3. Arthaud: Eclaireur skieur au combat.[back]

  4. Translator’s note. The author is referring to the deaths of the young climbers Vincedon and Henry, who were lost in a storm while traversing Mont Blanc at New Year 1957.[back]

  5. Translator’s note. Vauban was a famous military engineer and Marshal of France at the time of Louis XIV.[back]

  – Chapter Four –

  I Meet Lachenal

  That summer of 1945 marked a turning-point in my fortunes. Mountaineering, which had hitherto been my guiding passion as I sought for a way in the world, now became my whole life – job, passion and torment all in one.

  The weather always seemed to be good. My fellow instructors and I would take groups of students over the summits every day during the week. Without being in the top class some of these climbs were quite long and difficult, and after four or five of them in succession I could justly have looked forward to some rest at the weekend. But not a bit of it: far from quenching my thirst for action these ascents inflamed it, and I longed for contests of more uncertain outcome. As soon as work was over I would be back off up the mountain with the first companion I could find, often without even going home first. By dawn on Sunday, as the sun came up through the blue haze of the distance and reddened the granite spires far above the world of men, we would already have been fighting upwards for hours in our pursuit of grandeur and beauty.

  I collected climbs at fantastic speed, often managing five or six in succession. Sometimes, if we got back to the refuge before midday, I would even try to persuade a friend to make a good day of it by setting out at once for another mountain. Nothing else counted for me any more: I was devoured by a frenzied passion. Living in the courts of the sky I forgot I was of the earth. My eyes seemed immense in a face emaciated by under-nourishment on army fare. My wife was tired of being neglected, and was threatening to leave me. But nothing had any effect, neither fatigue nor the troubles of the heart. When the summits shone in the sun their appeal was stronger than reason.

  In those days nearly all the E.H.M. officers were climbers, and some of the course were commanded by Édouard Frendo, one of the best mountaineers in the country. With one exception, they all showed the greatest sympathy with the position of the retained volunteers, so manifestly unjust by comparison with that of the salaried instructors. Apart from the matter of pay I lived virtually as a civilian. Nobody made any demands on me beyond the actual instructing, to which I gave myself enthusiastically. Life would have been marvellous but for a certain petty-minded captain, who, not content with lecturing us from one day’s end to another, took it upon himself to teach me a bit more respect for military discipline. Perhaps he was jealous of my success in mountaineering, for he himself was unskilful and timorous. Whatever the cause, he began by pulling me up over tiny details. The first time he got me because I wasn’t wearing any decorations or badges of rank, and as a result I lost my weekend’s leave. Next he caught me twenty feet from the barracks without a hat on. This, it appeared, was a grave crime, difficult to overestimate, and I was informed that henceforth I was not to go climbing on Sundays without asking permission. Luckily the commandant always gave it.

  The day finally came when my enemy triumphed. I had been in bed with a high temperature all week, but by the time Friday arrived I was full of renewed energy. The sky was blue as in a dream, the voice of the mountains was calling me from the heights. I could hold out no longer. I wandered into the town, still staggering slightly, to see if I could find a companion. Down in the Place de la Poste with its grey, shapeless buildings, a bedizened crowd, typical of Chamonix in the summer season, was coming and going. Pushing between the fat middle-aged women in shorts and the office managers in paper hats, I bumped by chance into a well-known Parisian climber called Dr Jacques Oudot. Oudot was later to be one of my companions on the Annapurna expedition, where his courage and conscientiousness were exemplary, but at that time I hardly knew him though he was already a famous surgeon. Short, thick-set, sallow, ugly and almost bald, he looked more of a city-dweller sickly from the foul atmosphere of the laboratories than a noted rock climber. Only as one came closer did one sense the extraordinary energy in his small, deep-set eyes. In fact he was one of the most persevering mountaineers I have ever known, capable of amazing feats out of all proportion to his physique.

  I liked him at once, and without more ado asked him if he would come with me to try the north face of the Dru. In spite of its great reputation he accepted immediately. At that time it had only been climbed on four occasions, all of which had included a bivouac, and its crux, the ‘Fissure Allain’, was supposed to be one of the most difficult pitches in the Alps. Reckoning therefore on a night out at the level of the small hanging glacier known as ‘the Niche’, about half way up the face, we caught the first train up to Montenvers.

  Morning found us tramping slowly up through steep slopes of alpine rhododendrons under a pitiless sun. The air was full of the enfeebling softness of the south wind, and we halted frequently. Oudot was as happy as a sandboy, and seemed ten years younger. Whenever he smiled his rather awkward, even brutal features were illuminated with an astonishing sweetness.

  Despite the punishing heat and the lingering vestiges of the strange illness that had put me out of action for several days, we got on to the climb early in the afternoon. As we made our way slowly up its strenuous cracks, salvoes of boulders shot over our heads to disappear a thousand feet below. It had been a dry summer, and on a warm evening like this nothing could have been more natural than a bit of stone fall. Just after climbing the ‘Fissure Lambert’, we came to an overhang which seemed to me rather too hard to do with a heavy sack on my back. I climbed down and handed it over to Jacques, thinking that I could always give him a pull from above if necessary. I then went at the overhang again, but some holds I had failed to notice before made it much easier than expected. I was just going to pull over into a smooth but easy-angled couloir when I looked up and saw a gigantic block, perhaps a hundred feet across, slowly beginning to slip from its place in the niche and roll straight towards me. I hurriedly slid back and ducked under the overhang, fully expecting it to collapse under the enormous weight of rock. There was a terrible rumbling crash as the block bounced, missing me by about three feet, then took off in one bound, thirty feet out from the face, and thundered into the moraine like a bomb. A cloud of dust rose into the air. Five mountaineers who were about to install a bivouac nearby told me later that the block made a crater in the ice six feet deep. Paralysed with fear, we stayed where we were until the evening chill should have frozen the mountain into inactivity. Only with the infinite silence of the stars did we start to move again.

  Unfortunately the heat of the day had turned the gully below the niche into a waterfall, and the darkness made it impossible to climb the more delicate slabs on either side. Thus we had to climb in the very bed of the torrent and arrived at our bivouac-place soaked to the skin. The wind had veered round to the north and was blowing hard and chill. There was no shelter on the face, and the cold went through us like a knife. At that time we did not yet have the bivouac equipment which nowadays enables climbers to sit out the coldest nights
almost in comfort. Apart from the clothes I stood up in, I had only a quilted jacket so worn that it was little more use than a sweater, and an old waterproof cape all stuck together with tape. I had nothing at all to cover my legs, and my damp breeches were soon frozen.

  The night was hard to bear. The sun does not get round on to north faces until late in the day, so there could be no question of waiting for it. It took us some time to thaw out our stiffened muscles and start climbing again. The rock was icy, but a few strenuous pitches soon warmed us, and we were already at grips with the famous Allain crack when seven other climbers caught us up. By a curious trick of fate there were more men on the face that day than there had been since time began. To judge from their accent the first five were from Nice, and I reckoned that they must be part of a well-known group who had been knocking off all the best climbs in the Dauphiné during the last few years. The other two were Chamonix guides, Félix Martinetti and Gilbert Ravanel, noted for their sporting spirit and disinterested love of the mountains. The whole lot of them had set out at dawn, shod in light espadrilles and carrying no bivouac equipment, climbing at a rate that a little friendly competition had done nothing to diminish.[1] Our presence in the crack was now holding them up, and all the more so because we were having a tough time with it. Tired of waiting, Martinetti went off along a ledge to have a view of the crags of the west face, which in those days were still unclimbed. When he got to the end of the ledge he suddenly noticed another crack which looked feasible. A few strenuous pulls, two pitons, and he stood on a ledge sixty feet above us, having discovered the real line of least resistance. His route has been taken by almost everybody since. He now leant out and yodelled down to encourage us, but we were still fighting it out in our crack, one of the rucksacks having jammed just to help matters. All seven of the others now got ahead of us, but later on we were able to catch them up again and we went down to the Charpoua refuge together.