Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (43 page)

A search party left Cape Evans in late October 1912 tasked with the sad job of finding out what had happened to the missing men. They found the bodies of Scott, 43, Wilson, 39, and Bowers, 28, on November 12, still nearly 150 miles from the home base. Their tent was all but buried in the snow and just six inches or so of the top of it was still visible above the surface.

When the searchers dug away the drift and opened the tent, they found the dead men wrapped in their sleeping-bags. Scott was in the middle with his companions on either side. It looked as though Wilson and Bowers had died peacefully in their sleep. Scott was half out of his sleeping-bag, reaching one arm toward Wilson. In the opinion of the searchers, it hadn’t been an easy death for the captain. The men’s diaries, letters and other personal items were carefully gathered up for return to their families, before a simple funeral service was conducted beneath the endless sky. The tent was then collapsed on top of the bodies and a cairn of snow raised above it.

The search party looked for Captain Oates as well, but found only his sleeping-bag and one of his boots. They erected a cairn of snow and placed a wooden cross on top of it with a note that read:

Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman.

 

News of the deaths was made public back in Britain on February 13, 1913. There was a memorial service in St. Paul’s Cathedral the following day—but Kathleen was not there. Unaware of the tragedy that had overtaken her husband and the other men nearly a year before, she was by then en route to New Zealand, in hope and expectation of a happy reunion, and temporarily out of touch when the story broke. It was on the 19th of the month, aboard a mail steamer crossing the Pacific Ocean, that she received the news.

By the time she returned to Britain in April, Scott’s adventure was already in the process of being made legend. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith announced that had he lived Scott would have been made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. Kathleen was therefore ennobled as Lady Scott, in his absence.

It is Scott’s journal and letters that reveal what kind of man he was by the end of his long march, what he had learned about himself and about mankind. The words scratched upon page after page, in careful handwriting, ensured his immortality. Trapped at the end by merciless weather, out of food and fuel, the trio had had no choice but to bed down and wait for death. Though they had taken suicide pills with them for just such an eventuality, the seals on the bottles were intact when they were recovered.

“Had we lived,” wrote Scott in his “Message to the Public,” “I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”

There is a long straight line connecting Captain Scott and his fellows to all the other manly men of history—those who came before and those who have followed since. Scott’s own story seems
to me the most moving of all because his reach exceeded his grasp. He made it to the Pole, but the getting home again was beyond him. And yet he understood what he must do even at the last.

Success is counted sweetest, by those who ne’er succeed

To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need

Not one of all the purple host that took the flag today

Can tell the definition so clear of victory

As him defeated dying, on whose forbidden ear,

The distant sounds of triumph burst agonised and clear.

 

Scott’s writings reveal that he was the last to die, alone in that pitiless place. And yet he devoted many of his last hours to updating his journal and writing letters to friends, acquaintances and loved ones. Practical and unflappable to the end; there’s not a note of self-pity in any of it.

His letter to Kathleen was addressed “To my Widow,” and among other things makes clear he wished for her what King Leonidas of the Spartans had wished for his wife Gorgo. Leonidas was laconic in his choice of words, as demanded by his culture and upbringing: “Marry a good man,” he had told her, “and have strong children.”

Scott was an English gentleman and addressed his widow accordingly.

I want you to take the whole thing very sensibly, as I am sure you will. The boy will be your comfort. I had looked forward to helping you to bring him up, but it is a satisfaction to know that he will be safe with you. You know I cherish no sentimental rubbish about remarriage. When the right man comes to help you in life you ought to be your happy self again—I wasn’t a very good husband, but I hope I shall be a good memory. Certainly the end is nothing for you to be ashamed of, and I
like to think the boy will have a good start in his parentage of which he may be proud.

 

Was Scott a student of Spartan history? Had he learned from those long-lost heroes how manly men conduct themselves when all is lost? Did he learn from Leonidas that it was right to hope his wife and son would be happy again, after he was gone?

Kathleen continued her work as a sculptor and her first effort after Scott’s death was to create the bronze of him, wearing his Antarctic garb, that stands now in Waterloo Place, in London. As Scott had wished, she married for a second time, becoming the wife of Edward Hilton Young MP. The couple had one son, Wayland, also an MP. Kathleen died in 1947.

Scott had found the strength of character to reveal in simple words how he planned to face the end. His journal and his memory came back to a world close to a war that would change everything and everyone. Scott had shown how men might meet their deaths with dignity and without complaint. A generation would shortly try to measure themselves against the standard set by Captain Scott of the Antarctic. In many ways the men and boys of Flanders would fight in the shadow he had cast. Their name liveth for evermore.

Spare of visible emotion though the letter to Kathleen is, somehow it aches with the longing of a breaking heart.

You must know that quite the worst aspect of this situation is the thought that I shall not see you again. The inevitable must be faced…I think the last chance has gone. We have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight to the last…but in fighting there is a painless end, so don’t worry.

 

He knew it was the memory that mattered, and the story—an amazing story for his son, and every son:

Make the boy interested in Natural History if you can. It is better than games. They encourage it in some schools. I know you will keep him in the open air. Try and make him believe in a God, it is comforting.

What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better it has been than lounging about in too great comfort at home. What tales you would have had for the boy…

 

Captain Scott

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The Penlee Lifeboatmen

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John Paul Jones and the Birth of the US Navy

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The Demons of Camerone

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The Flight of the Nez Perces

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The Birkenhead Drill

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The Thin Red Line and the Charge of the Light Brigade

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The Battle of Trafalgar

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Moonwalkers and Apollo 13

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Constantinople

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Dien Bien Phu

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The Siege of the Alamo

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Thermopylae

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