When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain (3 page)

The question that remained unanswered was whether or not Mallory and Irvine had made it to the summit. Did they die on their way up? Or on their way down?

The team hoped they might find Mallory's camera: experts at Kodak had said that the film, though old, might yet be developed. But when the men reached inside the pouch around Mallory's neck, they found only a metal tin of stock cubes: ‘Brand & Co. Savoury Meat Lozenges'.

There was other evidence as well: a brass altimeter, a pocketknife, a monogrammed handkerchief and a pair of undamaged sun goggles in an inside pocket.

The goggles were potentially an important clue as to what had happened on that day in 1924. Just a few days before his attempt on the summit, Mallory's second climbing partner, Edward Norton, had suffered serious snow-blindness because he'd neglected to wear his goggles.

Mallory would not have dispensed with his goggles if climbing in daylight. The fact they were in his pocket suggested that the two men had completed their push for the summit in sunlight and were making their descent after dark.

No less interesting was an envelope found on Mallory's body. It was covered in numbers: pressure readings of the oxygen bottles they were carrying. It had long been believed that the climbers didn't have enough oxygen to get them to the summit. But the numbers showed that the two climbers were carrying five, perhaps six canisters – more than enough to get to the top of the mountain.

More tantalizing was an item that the searchers had expected to find on Mallory's body. He was known to have been carrying a photograph of his wife, Ruth, which he had vowed to leave on the summit. The photo was nowhere to be found, even though his wallet and other papers were intact.

The men who found Mallory were able to piece together a plausible scenario as to what happened on the fateful evening of his death. It is a story of adventure and tragic error – one that ultimately led to his doom.

It is late in the evening on 8 June, long after twilight, and the two climbers are still high on the mountain. Exhausted and with failing oxygen supplies, they are desperate to reach safety. As they cross a notoriously treacherous layer of marble and phyllite known as the ‘Yellow Band', one of the two climbers slips.

It may well have been Mallory. If so, his fall is halted by the rope, which dashes him into a rocky outcrop. His ribs are instantly broken and his elbow is dislocated. But he is held there by the rope, dangling in a void.

And then, unexpectedly, the rope snaps and he plunges through the darkness. He lands on a steep shelf of snow, snapping his tibia and fibula. But still he doesn't stop. Gravity drags him down the North Face at tremendous speed.

He's terrified and in appalling pain, but still conscious and trying to save himself. In desperation, he clutches at frozen scree, digging his fingers into the ice. Faster and faster he slides until his forehead smashes into a jagged outcrop of rock. It punctures a hole in his head.

He comes to a standstill at the same time as he loses consciousness. Pain and hypothermia rapidly take over. Within minutes, George Mallory is dead.

Irvine, meanwhile, has almost certainly met with a similar fate. He's fallen, seriously injured, and is also suffering from hypothermia. Within a few minutes of Mallory's death he, too, has succumbed to the cold.

But did they make it to the summit? Were they the first to climb Everest? It's a question that Eric Simonson's team was unable to answer with absolute certainty. The discovery of Mallory's body was a remarkable find, but the riddle is likely to remain unsolved unless or until the camera is found.

One person alone has felt able to say whether or not Mallory and Irvine deserve the title of ‘conquerors of Everest'. Mallory's son, John, was just three years old when he lost his father. To him, George Mallory's failure to return home provided all the answers he needed. ‘To me,' he said, ‘the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive. The job is only half done if you don't get down again.'

 

5

Drunk on the
Titanic

It was 14 April 1912. Charles Joughin had finally fallen asleep after a hard day's work in the ship's kitchens. Suddenly, he was woken by a tremendous jolt. He felt the vessel shudder violently beneath him. Then, after a momentary pause, it continued moving forward.

Joughin was puzzled but not unduly alarmed. He knew that icebergs had been sighted in the water; he also knew that Captain Edward Smith had ordered a change of course, steering the
Titanic
onto a more southerly route in order to avoid potential disaster. Assuming that the danger had passed, Joughin tried to return to sleep. But at about 11.35 p.m., just a few minutes after the jolt, he was summoned to the bridge. Here, he was given some most unwelcome information.

Captain Smith had sent an inspection team below decks to see if anything was wrong. The men had returned with the terrible news that the ship had struck an iceberg and that the force of the blow had seriously buckled the hull. Rivets had been forced out over a length of some ninety metres and seawater was now gushing into the ship at a tremendous rate.

This news might have been expected to cause panic. Yet it didn't. Most people believed the
Titanic
to be unsinkable. She had watertight compartments that could be closed in the event of disaster. This meant that even the most serious damage to the ship's hull could be contained.

But now, in this moment of crisis, these watertight compartments were revealed to have a catastrophic design flaw. As they filled with water, so they weighed down the ship's bow, allowing water to pour into other areas of the stricken vessel. A fourth, fifth and then a sixth compartment had already filled with water: it became obvious to Captain Smith that the
Titanic
was inevitably doomed to sink.

Joughin, the
Titanic
's chief baker, now swung into action. He aroused his fellow chefs from their beds and began to gather all the loaves of bread they could find. They then rushed back on deck and put four loaves into each lifeboat. They already knew that there were not enough boats for all the passengers. The
Titanic
had 2,223 people on board, yet there were only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people.

Charles Joughin realized that he, as a member of crew, would not be given a place in a lifeboat. As the ship began listing at an alarming angle, he decided to drink himself into oblivion. He descended into his cabin, downed a huge quantity of whisky (according to one account he finished off two bottles). He then returned to the deck and, with drunken energy, began pushing women into the lifeboats.

Once this was done, he staggered along the heavily listing promenade deck, wondering how long it would take for the ship to sink. He threw overboard some fifty deckchairs, along with other seats and cushions, in the hope that people in the water might be able to use them as rafts.

It was not long before he, too, found himself in the freezing Atlantic. ‘I got onto the starboard side of the poop,' he later recalled, ‘and found myself in the water. I do not believe my head went under the water at all. I thought I saw some wreckage.'

He swam towards this, not feeling the cold on account of all the whisky he had drunk, ‘and found a collapsible boat B with Lightoller and about twenty-five men on it'.

There was no room for Joughin. ‘I tried to get on,' he said, ‘but was pushed off, but I hung around. I got around to the opposite side and cook Maynard, who recognized me, helped me and held on to me.'

By this time, it was a miracle Joughin was still alive. The water temperature was two degrees below freezing. Most passengers and crew who had jumped into the water had died of hypothermia within fifteen minutes.

Yet Joughin was to remain in the water for a further four hours before he was finally pulled aboard a lifeboat that came alongside collapsible boat B. Along with the other survivors, he was eventually rescued by the
RMS Carpathia
, which arrived at the wreck site at 4.10 a.m.

Joughin believed that his extraordinary survival was due to the vast quantity of whisky he had drunk. Not so fortunate were 1,517 of his fellow crew and passengers. They died in the water, sober and cold.

The
Titanic
catastrophe was not Joughin's last shipwreck. He was on board the
SS Oregon
when she sank in Boston Harbour. He survived that disaster as well, although it is not known if he had once again fortified himself with a bottle or two of whisky.

 

6

The Man Who Was Buried Alive

Augustine Courtauld, a young London stockbroker, was bored with his job. He was bored with the paperwork. He was bored with his colleagues. He was desperate to do something more exciting with his life.

In 1930, he learned that volunteers were being recruited for an expedition to conduct weather observations at Icecap Station, a purpose-built post on the Greenland ice sheet. It was 2,600 metres above sea level and 112 miles west of the expedition's main base. And it was very, very cold.

Weather data for Arctic Greenland was desperately needed. The quickest air route from Europe to North America was over the ice sheet, but no one knew what the weather was like, especially in the winter months. Augustine Courtauld went to find out.

He travelled from the coast with a party whose task was to supply the weather station with enough food and fuel for two men. ‘But atrocious weather had so slowed down the journey that most of the food intended for the station was eaten on the way there. It looked as if the place would have to be closed down.' So wrote one of the men accompanying the supply party.

Courtauld thought that it would be a shame to abandon the expedition simply because there was not enough food. ‘I worked out that I could last out alone for five months,' he later wrote. ‘As I had frostbite in my toes, I had no wish to make the journey back. So I decided to stay on my own and keep the station going.'

Frostbitten toes is an eccentric reason for choosing to stay on the Greenland ice sheet in midwinter, but to Courtauld it had a certain logic. He could at least put his feet up for a few months.

Soon after settling into his new home it began to snow. Hard. His small tent was buried by drifting snow until only the tip of the ventilator pipe poked above the surface. Soon he was completely snowed in and effectively buried alive.

His supplies of food and fuel were soon depleted and he had no communication with the outside world. But he remained confident that a rescue team would eventually find him.

‘As each month passed without relief, I felt more and more certain of its arrival,' he later wrote. ‘By the time I was snowed in I had no doubts on the matter, which was a great comfort to my mind. I will not attempt any explanation of this, but leave it as a fact, which was very clear to me during that time, that while powerless to help myself, some outer force was in action on my side and I wasn't fated to leave my bones on the Greenland ice cap.'

Never once did he despair. Instead, he dreamed of roaring fires and his wife, Mollie, singing to him. He also prayed that Gino Watkins, with whom he had travelled to the base, would soon be coming to the rescue.

‘I began to feel complete confidence,' he wrote. ‘I knew that even if Gino was having to wait for better weather, he wouldn't let me down. I began to realize that I should not be left to die. I came to know that I was held by Everlasting Arms.'

On 5 May, exactly five months after he was left alone, the Primus gave its last gasp. ‘Very soon, there was a noise like a football match overhead. They had come! A hole of brilliant daylight appeared in the roof. There was Gino's voice saying: ‘Put these on.' He handed me a pair of snow-glasses. How different it was from the last time I had seen the outside world! It was May and now dazzling sunshine. I had not realized it would be like this.

‘They lost no time in pulling me out and I found I was quite all right. My legs were a bit weak. We set out for home next day. I rode on a sledge the whole way, reading
The Count of Monte Cristo
. Conditions were good and we completed the journey in five days. It had taken us six weeks on the way up.'

Courtauld declined to return to his former life as a stockbroker after his Greenland experience. Instead, he undertook an extraordinary six-hundred-mile journey down the unmapped Greenland coastline, travelling in an eighteen-foot open whaleboat.

It was more interesting than sitting behind a desk in London.

 

PART III

Hell in Japan

Just before the collision it is essential that you do not shut your eyes for a moment so as not to miss the target. Many have crashed into the targets with wide-open eyes. They will tell you what fun they had.

INSTRUCTIONS TO SECOND WORLD WAR KAMIKAZE PILOTS:
KAMIKAZE
, BY ALBERT AXELL AND HIDEAKI KASE

 

7

The Long War of Hiroo Onoda

His home was a dense area of rainforest and he lived on the wild coconuts that grew in abundance. His principal enemy was the army of mosquitoes that arrived with each new shower of rain. But for Hiroo Onoda, there was another enemy, one that remained elusive.

Unaware that the Second World War had ended twenty-nine years earlier, he was still fighting a lonely guerrilla war in the jungles of the Philippines.

The Americans had landed on Lubang Island in February 1945. Six months later, the Second World War had come to an end. Yet Hiroo Onoda and his small band of men had never received any orders to lay down their weapons. Rather, they'd been instructed to fight to the bitter end. Onoda was still carrying out these orders in 1974: his story is one of courage, farce and loyalty gone mad.

Hiroo Onoda was born to be a soldier. He had enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army at the age of twenty, receiving training in intelligence and guerrilla warfare. In December 1944, he and a small group of elite soldiers were sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines.