From Ice Floes to Battlefields Read online

  In memory of my late parents, Jack and Marion Strathie, and all those who have died in or suffered due to wars or in exploring the wonderful world which we all share.

  Acknowledgements

  I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to numerous organisations and individuals who have contributed in a wide range of ways to this book and have made researching and writing it both enlightening and enjoyable.

  I thank the museums, archives, libraries and galleries that conserve and interpret the documents, artefacts and images which lie at the heart of biographical and non-fiction writing. I particularly thank the following, including for permission to quote from documents in their custody or use images from their collections.

  In Britain: Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge (Naomi Boneham, Lucy Martin); Blandford Museum (Bridget Spiers and fellow volunteers); The Wilson, Cheltenham (Ann-Rachael Harwood); Cheltenham Library; Haslar Heritage Group (Eric C. Birbeck MVO); King’s College, Cambridge (Rupert Brooke Archives); Imperial War Museum; National Archives, Kew; National Portrait Gallery; Natural History Museum; Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery; Royal Geographical Society (Eugene Rae, Sarah Evans and colleagues); Royal Signals Museum (Adam Forty); The Alliance Boots Archive and Museum Collection; University of St Andrews Library (Group 22–2, Rachel Hart and colleagues).

  Outside Britain: Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand (Sarah Murray, Nicolas Boigelot); Akaroa Museum; Archives New Zealand; In Flanders Field Museum, Ypres, Belgium (Dominiek Dendooven, Annick Vandenbilke); Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada (Bert Riggs); Royal British Columbia Museum, Canada (Marion Tustanoff, Kelly-Ann Turkington); University of Melbourne Archives, Australia (Georgina Ward); Waitaki District Libraries and Archive, Oamaru, New Zealand.

  I also thank the descendants and family members of Harry Pennell and others who served on the Terra Nova expedition, and writers, historians, explorers and others who have provided guidance, information, encouragement and, in several cases, permission to use written material or photographs. They include: David and Virginia Pennell; June Back and family; Christopher Bayne and other relatives of Edward Atkinson; Dr Paul Baker; John Barfoot; Sarah Baxter (Society of Authors); Christopher Bilham; Dr Steven Blake, David Elder and other members of the Cheltenham Wilson centenary committee; Sheena Boese; Julian Broke-Evans; Robin Burton; Stephen Chambers (Gallipoli Association); Jeff Cooper (Friends of Dymock Poets); Peter Cooper (SEA. Ltd); David Craig; Wendy Driver; Angela Egerton; Tony Fleming; Mike Goodearl; Luci Gosling (Mary Evans Picture Library); Hermann Gran; Signora Francesca Guarnieri; Dr Henry Guly; Andrew Hay and family; Trevor Henshaw; Steven Heyde; Dr Max Jones; Heather Lane; Jo and Ian Laurie; Neela Mann; Karen May; Katherine Moody (Christchurch Public Libraries); Sir Andrew Motion (Trustee, Rupert Brooke Estate); David Newman; David Parsons; Graeme Pearson; Thérèse Radic (University of Melbourne); Adrian Raeside; Dr Stephen Ross and Dr Pearl Jacks; Leonard Sellers; Caroline Strange (Australian National University, Canberra); George and Valerie Skinner; Roy Swales; Michael Tarver, Joan Whiting-Moon, and (alphabetically last, but certainly not least) Dr David Wilson.

  I am also grateful to the authors whose books have provided invaluable information on and background to events covered in this book. I also thank those involved in the BBC’s First World War programmes and those working at the BBC and elsewhere on websites and blogs covering different aspects of the First World War and polar exploration.

  My thanks go also to family members and friends who have supported me on my Antarctic and First World War voyages of discovery. They include (but are not limited to): Jean Strathie; Roberta Deighton, Fiona Eyre, Jill Burrowes and families; Michael Bourne, Ali Rieple, the Nuttalls, Isaacs, Nops and other Cranfield friends; Helen Brown; the Cairncrosses; Lin and Robert Coleman; the Fortes family and Margaret Douglas; Tracey Jaggers, Pauline Lyons, Moira and Martin Wood, Penie Coles, Jackie Chelin, Simon Day and other Cheltenham friends; Charlotte Mackintosh and her fellow godchildren; Jan Oldfield; the late Clive Saunders and Eva Borgo Saunders; Joanna Scott; Ann Watkin, the Leggs and other St Andrews University friends; Roz and John Wilkinson; Sophie Wilson.

  Thanks also to Mark Beynon, Naomi Reynolds and their colleagues at The History Press for commissioning this book and helping bring it to fruition. I also thank them, other publishers, bookshops and libraries who continue to make books widely available.

  As the above acknowledgements show, this book is the sum of many parts; any errors within it are of my own making.

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Prologue

  1. Southward Ho!

  2. Battling Through the Pack

  3. Breaking News – and a Mysterious Death

  4. Final Journeys

  5. From Oamaru to Awliscombe

  6. Ring Out the Old, Ring In the New

  7. From Arctic to Antwerp

  8. ‘Antarctics’ on the Seven Seas

  9. Cavalry Officers, Chateaux and Censors

  10. Your Country Needs You!

  11. From Blandford Camp Towards Byzantium

  12. Crossing Paths and Keeping in Touch

  13. The ‘Big Show’ – and a Great Loss

  14. Deaths on the Western Front

  15. Of Scientists, Sailors and Shackleton

  16. A Norwegian ‘Warbird’ Keeps His Promise

  17. Northward Ho!

  18. Moving On

  Epilogue

  Appendices A: Expedition Personnel

  B: Summary Timeline, 1910–19

  C: Other Information

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Plates

  Copyright

  Maps Antarctica

  New Zealand

  Voyages of the Terra Nova, 1910–13

  McMurdo Sound

  Voyages of the Terra Nova, 1912

  Spitsbergen

  Antwerp

  Ypres

  Turkey, showing Gallipoli and Dardanelles

  Gallipoli, Helles Sector

  Battle of Jutland

  Ancre and Surrounding Area

  Beaucourt-sur-Ancre

  Arctic Region, including Spitsbergen and North Russia

  Introduction

  About five years ago, during my research for Birdie Bowers: Captain Scott’s Marvel, I noticed that the name of Harry Pennell appeared regularly in Bowers’ letters and journals from the early part of the Terra Nova expedition. Bowers always wrote warmly of Pennell, as did Scott, Edward Wilson and other members of the expedition. Pennell, who had joined the expedition as navigator on the Terra Nova, was clearly a much respected, admired and liked member of the team.

  In February 2013 I visited Oamaru, New Zealand, where events were being held to commemorate the centenary of the clandestine landing by Pennell and his friend Edward Atkinson with the news that Scott, Bowers, Wilson, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans had died on their way back from the South Pole. A conversation with members of Harry Pennell’s family, the discovery that Pennell had several connections with Gloucestershire (where I live) and the availability of previously unpublished letters and journals combined to inspire this book. When I realised the extent to which Pennell kept in regular contact, often from a great distance, with his Terra Nova expedition companions (the ‘Antarctics’ of the title) and others, including Bowers’ mother and that he had died in one of the major engagements of the First World War, I decided that the book should take the form of a group portrait rather than a simple biography. I have a feeling that Pennell, a modest man who valued his friends and colleagues, would not have objecte
d.

  In outward appearances Pennell and Bowers were very different – Pennell was tall and lean, Bowers short and stocky – but they shared a love of and capacity for sustained hard work, a profound Christian faith and a deep sense of devotion and duty to family, friends and colleagues. They were both highly intelligent and fascinated by the world they lived in; both saw ships and the sea as their element and calling.

  Bowers and Pennell met in London in June 1910 and took their leave of each other in early January 1911, with Bowers heading south from Cape Evans to lay food depots along the Ross Sea ice shelf and Pennell sailing north to New Zealand. Both hoped that Scott would allow Pennell to join the landing party the following year but events conspired against Pennell and Bowers meeting again.

  The first part of From Ice Floes to Battlefields tells the story of the Terra Nova expedition (largely from Pennell’s standpoint) and its bitter-sweet aftermath, which is interrupted when ‘trouble in the Balkans’ leads into the First World War. The following section consists of a series of interconnected (though largely self-contained) chapters which follow Pennell and his friends as they once again expand their horizons, push themselves to their limit and deal with death.

  No man, even the apparently ubiquitous Winston Churchill, saw and understood every aspect of the war. Pennell and his friends kept in touch with each other but when on active duty sometimes did not know what was happening on a nearby ship, in a trench a few miles away or to their families. In writing of Scott’s ‘Antarctics’ and their experiences I have largely done so from their viewpoints, which combine to produce a series of ‘in the moment’ snapshots rather than a comprehensive panorama or in-depth analysis of a globe-encompassing war.

  During the Terra Nova expedition Pennell and many of his companions kept journals and wrote long letters, many of which are held by the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, or other archives in Britain and elsewhere. The wartime writings of Scott’s ‘Antarctics’ are less easily traced and, as a result, the source material for the second part of this book ranges from affectionate family letters to brusque regimental diaries and, where no primary material has been identified, from detailed analyses of a single engagement to century-spanning regimental histories.

  In the First World War, as in Antarctica and on the Southern Ocean, some of Scott’s men thrived, others struggled and a few died. The five men who died on their return journey from the South Pole are, perhaps inevitably, the most famous members of the expedition. When I embarked on writing this book, I viewed Pennell and other ‘Antarctics’ largely through the prism of the Terra Nova expedition; now, as I finish it, I am full of admiration for what they achieved both in Antarctica and during the war and touched by the efforts they made to keep in touch with and support their fellow ‘Antarctics’.

  I hope that readers will also share my sense of discovery – and, on many occasions, enjoyment – as they follow Harry Pennell and his companions from the ice floes of Antarctica, by way of London’s theatres and restaurants and the British countryside, to the battlegrounds of Europe and the Seven Seas and into the hard-won peace which followed.

  Anne Strathie, Cheltenham

  Antarctica, showing surrounding countries. Map © and courtesy of Michael Tarver, Mike Goodearl.

  Prologue

  In February 1911, on the Ross Sea ice shelf in Antarctica, Norwegian mariner and ski expert Lieutenant Tryggve Gran found himself sharing a tent with Captain Lawrence Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons and Lieutenant Henry Bowers of the Royal Indian Marine.1

  The three men, who had met in London in June 1910, were all members of the shore-based party of Captain Robert Scott’s second Antarctic expedition. They were on their way back to the expedition’s headquarters at Cape Evans after several weeks of laying food depots to be used during the following season’s attempt to reach the South Pole.

  As the Antarctic winter approached, days shortened and temperatures dropped. Day by day, they plodded onwards, following in their snow-filled outward tracks, peering into the misty gloom for route markers they had planted on their way south. At the end of each day’s march, after building walls of snow to shelter their weary ponies, the three men pitched their tent and crawled into their cramped quarters. They would then light their portable stove, wait patiently while ice and snow melted into their first drink since their midday break and prepare some simple hot food. They would then climb into their sleeping bags for some well-earned rest.

  During the long journey from Britain ‘Birdie’ Bowers and ‘Soldier’ Oates had become good friends. Bowers owed his nickname to his large, beak-like nose; Oates was the expedition’s only military man. Tryggve Gran, whose first name most of his fellow explorers found hard to pronounce, was known as ‘Trigger’. Gran, one of the youngest men on the expedition, had been recruited by Scott as a ski expert; his ability to move quickly and fluently across the snow was much admired, but he had gained a reputation (including with Scott) for a tendency to conserve his energy between journeys. Bowers and Oates were, by contrast, recognised as two of the hardest-working and most robust members of the expedition.

  Gran hoped that the current period of enforced proximity would enable him to develop more of a bond with his two British companions. As all three men had travelled widely, he decided to initiate a discussion on international relations, including those between Britain and Germany. Gran recalled an occasion when, as a young midshipman, he had arrived in Hamburg to find German dockers standing on the quayside shouting ‘Down with England and the damned Englishmen!’ When he had tried to find out what had given rise to the demonstration he learned that the owners of Germany’s main transatlantic shipping line had tried to break a local strike by bringing in British dockers.

  Oates said he would not be surprised if Gran, like most other ‘foreigners’, was also anti-British. Bowers, in an effort to keep the peace, suggested that if Britain ever found herself at war with Germany, Gran could join him in taking a commission with Oates’ regiment. Bowers was so sure that Gran would agree to the prospect of the three men fighting together against the Germans that he wagered Oates some of his soup that evening if Gran proved him wrong.

  After Gran confirmed that Bowers was correct, Oates and Gran shook hands to seal their bargain – and Bowers began looking forward to his soup.

  On 29 October 1912, after the long, dark Antarctic winter was over, Gran and other members of the expedition’s landing party set out from Cape Evans to try to establish what had happened to Scott and the other members of the South Pole party, which had, they knew, included Bowers and Oates.

  On 12 November Gran and his companions spied the tip of a tent above the snow. Inside they found the bodies of Scott, Bowers and Edward Wilson, Scott’s Chief of Scientific Staff. There was no sign of the bodies of Oates or Petty Officer Edgar ‘Taff’ Evans.

  Scott’s journal entries showed that Evans had died in mid-February and that Oates, whose feet had become so badly frostbitten that he could hardly walk, had limped out of their shared tent a month later. Oates had hoped that by sacrificing his life he would give Scott, Wilson and Bowers a better chance of survival. But they had died in their blizzard-bound tent towards the end of March 1912.

  On the way back to Cape Evans Gran wore Scott’s skis, so that they at least would have completed the return journey to the South Pole.

  On Thursday, 30 July 1914, on a beach at Cruden Bay, near Aberdeen, Gran waited for the weather to clear so he could embark on his potentially record-breaking flight over the North Sea. He knew this was his last chance as British aviation authorities had announced that all commercial flights from Britain would be banned from that evening due to the tense international situation.

  Just over a month previously Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Since then, the situation had escalated and it now seemed possible (at least according to the newspapers) that major powers, including Germany and Britain, might become involved i
n what had initially seemed to be an isolated incident in a troubled but distant region.

  As Tryggve Gran waited for the North Sea mist to lift he remembered his conversation with Bowers and Oates in a tent at the other end of the world – and the promise he had made to them.

  New Zealand, showing places associated with the Terra Nova expedition. Map © and courtesy of Michael Tarver, Mike Goodearl.

  Voyages of the Terra Nova during the expedition: the years appear at the northerly end of each voyage; the voyage towards King Edward VII Land took place in early 1911. Map by Stanfords, image © private.

  McMurdo Sound, showing (on right) Ross Island, with Cape Evans and Hut Point. Map by Stanfords, image © private.

  Voyages of the Terra Nova, January–March 1912, showing the journeys made when depositing Campbell and his Northern Party at Evans Cove and attempting to relieve them; where lines stop short of the coast, this indicates that pack ice was blocking the route. Map by Stanfords, image © private.

  Note

  1. This incident was related by Gran in his memoirs of the Terra Nova expedition, Tryggve Gran’s Antarctic Diary, 1910–13, and his war experiences, Under the British Flag; it is also referred to in Limb and Cordingley, Captain Oates, p. 140, and Smith, I Am Just Going Outside, pp. 143–4.

  1

  Southward Ho!

  In London, on Friday, 20 May 1910, Captain Robert Scott, Lieutenant Edward Evans, Lieutenant Henry Bowers and other naval officers who would soon be travelling to Antarctica on SY Terra Nova took part in the funeral parade of King Edward VII.

  The late monarch’s son, now King George V, was joined in his mourning by members of his extended family, including the rulers of Germany, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Bulgaria and members of the ruling families of Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Yugoslavia, Montenegro, Romania, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and Egypt.