A fresh Expedition constituted for this one purpose must be organized. A new permission from the Tibetan Government was applied for, and, when this was received, and Howard Bury and his party had returned, preparations were made at speed. And there was no time to lose, for it was evident from Mallory’s reports that the climb should be made before the monsoon broke. It breaks early in June. In the last fortnight of May and the first week of June the climbers should be on the mountain. This would mean that the Expedition must leave Darjiling before the end of March. For this to be possible stores and equipment must be got away from England in January 1922. And it was now November, 1921. Speed therefore was needed.
But the all-important question of leadership had first to be decided. Howard Bury had done so much and had done it so well that it was hard to ask him to stand down. In the diplomatic preliminaries on his first mission to India and now in the general conduct of the Expedition, the overcoming of grave transport difficulties which had arisen, the arrangement for supplies, the delicate dealings with the Tibetans, and the strategy of the entire Reconnaissance, he had shown so much proficiency and tact, and he must have looked forward so keenly to reaping the final fruit of all his endeavours, that it must have been a cruel strain on himself now to give way. But the conquest of Everest demands, time after time, the sacrifice of the individual for the common purpose. There was now available a man pre-eminently fitted for the leadership, and Howard Bury chivalrously accepted what was clearly so desirable in the interest of the whole enterprise.
Brigadier-General Hon. C.G. Bruce, on his retirement from service in India, had received an appointment in the Territorial Force and could not join the first Expedition, but now he was able to obtain leave. He was too old to be one of the climbers. And it is doubtful whether at any time he would have been able to reach the summit, for experience has shown that it is men of a lighter, slimmer build, with less weight to carry, who go highest on Everest. But no better leader for the whole Expedition could be found; for his experience of the Himalaya and Himalayan people is unequalled. He had belonged to a Gurkha regiment and been stationed in the Himalaya nearly all his service – and Gurkhas are inhabitants of Nepal in which half of Everest lies. He had been a member of many Himalayan Expeditions, from Sir Martin Conway’s of 1892 onward. He had also exerted himself to learn the craft of mountaineering in the Alps; and he had taken Gurkhas there too. And he had such a knowledge of these hill peoples, such an understanding of them, such a way with them, that he could get more out of them than any other living man. He was devoted to them and they adored him. And as the English climbers would be absolutely dependent on these men to carry a light camp high enough to make the final dash for the top possible, Bruce’s influence with them was of priceless value to the Expedition. And the same characteristics which enabled him to exert this influence with the simple hill-men made him also an ideal leader of any expedition.
For he is an extraordinary mixture of boy and man. You never know whether it is a boy or a man whom you are talking to. If he lives to be a hundred he will always be a boy; and as a boy he must always have been a man. He is a boisterous boy, perpetually effervescing with boyish fun. And he is a shrewd, competent man who will not stand the slightest nonsense. A remarkable and very effective combination. He has that pluck, too, which will never allow his spirits to be depressed. And these spirits are infectious; the whole party catches them. That is why he is so acceptable as a header. Any party with Bruce in it would be a cheery party – and being cheery would be able to do its work to best advantage.
Many are the stories of Bruce. One is that, when a dispute arose on a certain expedition as to who was above who, Bruce said: “Well, I’m only a coolie,” and took up a load and carried it. Which is very similar to a story about another great mountaineer, the Duke of the Abruzzi, on his expedition in Alaska, who, when the men were objecting to carrying loads, shamed them into doing it by strapping one on his own back and carrying it a whole stage.
This is the man who was now invited to lead the Expedition; and, with his aid, the actual climbers had then to be selected. Fortunately Mallory would be again available, but Bullock had to return to his Consular duties and watch proceedings from the comfortable haven of Havre. Finch had now recovered and in him the Expedition would have an expert mountaineer of great experience, for he had spent much of his youth in Switzerland and climbed in winter as well as summer. And even Mallory could not surpass him in keenness and determination to conquer Everest. These two had been considered before. Two new climbers in England to be invited to join were Norton and Somervell.
Major (now Lieutenant-Colonel) E.F. Norton, D.S.O., was well known in the Alpine Club and was well versed in the lore of mountaineering. He had the additional advantage of having served in India and been on shooting expeditions in the Himalaya. He could speak Hindustani and knew how to handle Indian peoples. Compact and collected, erect and direct, and with a habit of command, he inspired confidence at once. And there was a kindliness and suavity about him which increased the trust placed in him. He was indeed a combination of many qualities. As an officer of the Royal Horse Artillery he was noted for the smartness of his battery; he had served with distinction in the War; he had passed the Staff College; for seven years he had run the Kadir Cup Meeting – the great pig-sticking event in India; he was a keen observer of birds; and he was an amateur painter of more than average ability. In everything he was methodical and in hand. And in his punctuality he took great pride: he would be neither too early nor too late. It was not much more than a minute before the train left Victoria that he arrived at the station on his way to India and he was leisurely saying good-bye to his friends and the train was well on the move as he quietly stepped into it continuing his conversation. With him there would be no flurry in emergency. Forethought would have provided for every contingency. And when the ultimate moment came one might be certain he would put all his well-saved energies into the decisive action.
No less – perhaps even more – versatile was Howard Somervell. A surgeon by profession, he was a skilled and daring mountaineer, and also a painter and a musician, of no mean talent. An inhabitant of the Lake District, he had been with hills all his life and loved them. He was a man of great resolution and great fortitude and great energy and stamina. But over and above this he was a man of a great and a stout and a warm heart – the kind of ready, open, accessible man that every other man feels at once at home with; and a dependable handy man who would be all there when a hard turn had to be done. A big strong man – not in body but in disposition, and with abounding buoyancy. In body there was nothing particular to meet the eye. He certainly had not the erectness of Norton nor the huge strength of Bruce. And he was not wiry. Perhaps suppleness was its chief characteristic – as it was a characteristic of his mind – the suppleness of a spring, with readiness to yield but tenacity to return.
Somervell is a writer as well as everything else, and publishers should be on the look-out for the book he will write on Everest twenty years hence when the mightiest impressions have had time to make themselves felt to the full. A man of science, a man of art, a man of warm humanity, and a man of strong religious feeling, he should have something worth saying when memories of physical suffering have faded away and the spirituality of the whole adventure has had time to mature in his mind.
Mallory and Finch, Norton and Somervell – these were the climbers who could be counted on to go highest. Then came Colonel E.L. Strutt, D.S.O., Dr. Wakefield, Captain Geoffrey Bruce, and Mr. C.G. Crawford of the Indian Civil Service who, because they were either too old for the highest strain or had not yet sufficient mountaineering experience, would form the support.
Strutt was a man of great experience in the Alps and of the type for the top if he could have been on Everest a few years earlier. He would be invaluable as second-in-command and in charge of the Expedition when it left the Base Camp where Bruce would remain.
Wakefield, like Somervell, came from the Lake District and as a young man had there performed prodigious feats of mountaineering. He was now in practice in Canada, but so desperately keen on joining the Expedition that he sold his practice and came over.
Geoffrey Bruce was a younger cousin of General Bruce and was not technically trained in mountaineering. But he had been about in the Himalaya and belonged to a Gurkha Regiment; so he would be helpful with the Nepalese and Tibetans, and available at a pinch to climb with the more experienced mountaineers.
Crawford was a daring rock climber and serving in the Hill districts of India had become enthusiastic about the idea of climbing Everest. And his knowledge of the language and ways of the people would also be a help.
Then as doctor and naturalist came that veteran Himalayan climber, Dr. T.G. Longstaff, who still holds the record for having attained a higher summit than anyone else. Others have climbed higher than he has on the sides of mountains. But no one has reached a higher summit than Trisul, 23,406 feet, which he climbed in 1907. He had also discovered a wonderful glacier region in the Karakoram Himalaya. And his wide experience in the Alps and the Himalaya made his judgment on situations and conditions a valuable contribution to the Expedition. His genial enthusiastic nature was an additional contribution of value.
And this time the Expedition was to have an official photographer. Captain J.B. Noel had made a journey from Sikkim in the direction of Mount Everest in 1913, and ever since had interested himself in the idea of climbing the mountain. He had also interested himself in photography and become an expert in the art, and especially in cinematography. He gave up the Army and joined the Expedition. Perhaps his chief characteristic was always being up to the occasion. When most wanted Noel would be there – when most wanted as a man, that is, not necessarily as a photographer. He also had great pertinacity and was a devoted lover of mountain beauty.
There was an idea of getting an artist of distinction to accompany the Expedition to paint the wonderful mountain scenery. It is true that Everest from the Base Camp is no more imposing than Mont Blanc from many standpoints. The Base Camp is itself so high that Everest does not rise higher above it than Mont Blanc or Mont Rosa rise above the lower valleys. Still it has the fascination which attaches to the highest mountain in the world. Also, from the Kama Valley, Everest and Makalu must present an appearance unequalled by any mountain in Europe. And if the Tibetan plains and the lower slopes of the Tibetan mountains are arid, bare and uninteresting, yet with the monsoon comes the haze which transfigures plain and mountain and afterwards made Somervell despair of finding in his pallet a blue of sufficient brilliance and intensity to reproduce the colour of the shadows twenty or thirty miles away. There was evidently in the Everest region scope for a painter of the very first rank. And on the way up to Tibet through Sikkim there was mountain and forest scenery on the grandest possible scale. However, no artist of the front rank, possessed of the physique for the journey, could be found. So the Expedition had to depend on Noel’s photographs and Somervell’s pictures, painted in hurried moments snatched from climbing, to reproduce the impressions the mountains made.
While all these preparations were in progress a thorny question was raised. Why not use oxygen? Kellas had started experiments in the use of oxgyen for climbing. Why not continue them? The one serious obstacle to attaining the summit of the mountain was the lack of oxygen in the air. Supply that want and the climbers would be up it to-morrow.
So far the Everest Committee had not thought of equipping the Expedition with oxygen, because there had been doubt as to the possibility of supplying it in any portable form. And then there was just a suspicion at the back of men’s minds that it was not exactly sporting to use it. It could be argued of course that inhaling oxygen was no more unsporting than taking a nip of brandy or a cup of beef-tea. But there the fact remained that a man who got up without oxygen would be looked upon as having done a finer deed than the man who climbed Everest using oxygen. We would not ask a man if he had stimulated himself with tea on the way up as long as he had reached the summit. But if he had used oxygen we would certainly rate his achievement lower than if he had used only the usual stimulants. There was, therefore, a prejudice against using oxygen. And the Committee shared it. They did subsequently abandon this prejudice, but they might have done better to retain it. For by not using oxygen it has been proved that men’s bodies do adjust themselves to the unusual conditions. Men get “acclimatized” and can ascend to 28,000 feet, as they have shown.
However, this much was not known in 1922 when the preparations were being made. Then no man had ascended higher than 24,600 feet. To many scientific men it seemed impossible that the summit would ever be attained without some adventitious aid. And many mountaineers, and among the new members of the Expedition, notably Finch, were in favour of its use. If you want to make certain of reaching the summit, use oxygen, they said. And when Somervell made a very powerful and persuasive appeal for its use the Committee finally and unanimously agreed.
Yet it was a hesitating agreement. And it may be doubted whether it was a wise one. Beyond one or two members the Expedition as a whole was never thoroughly keen on its use. The apparatus was heavy and unwieldy; and Somervell himself did not use it. And unless there were real faith in it oxygen was not likely to be successful.
The consideration that weighed most with the Committee was that an oxygen pair might be able to pioneer the way for a non-oxygen pair. It might be easier to get to 26,000, 27,000 feet or whatever was the altitude aimed at with oxygen; and then the way having once been trodden others would follow more readily. In actual practice it turned out the other way round in every instance. Always it was the non-oxygen men who led the way.
There is such a thing as being too much dependent on science and too little dependent on the human spirit. Everest stands for an adventure of the spirit. And things might have gone better if faith in the spirit had been stronger.