Cherry (51 page)

Camping near the Transantarctic Mountains. Atch in his lab at the back of the hut: ‘I consider him to be straight as a die.’

A sledging party leaves Ross Island and heads for the Barrier.

‘Even now, the Antarctic is to the rest of the earth as the Abode of the Gods was to the ancient Chaldees, a precipitous and mammoth land lying far beyond the seas.’

‘This winter travel is a new and bold venture, but the right men have gone to attempt it.’ Birdie Bowers, Bill Wilson and Cherry set out on the winter journey to Cape Crozier.

‘But this journey had beggared our language: no words could express its horror.’

The South Polar Times
: ‘Poor Cherry perspired over the editorial,’ wrote Scott.

Scott’s birthday dinner, Cape Evans, 6 June 1911.
Left to right
: Atch, Cecil Meares, Titus Oates (
standing
), Cherry, Griff Taylor, Edward Nelson, Teddy Evans, Scott, Bill Wilson, George ‘Sunny Jim’ Simpson, Tryggve Gran (
standing
), Birdie Bowers, Silas Wright, Frank ‘Deb’ Debenham, Bernard Day.

Silas Wright: ‘robust, willing and uncompromising’.

Biologist Denis Lillie, working on his sponges on the
Terra Nova
.

‘It will be a fine thing to do that plateau with man-haulage in these days of the supposed decadence of the British race.’ The polar party on the final slog to the South Pole. Birdie Bowers has the camera.

One Ton Depôt.

‘If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin’s egg.’

Lieutenant-Commander Cherry-Garrard at Lamer. During the First World War the house was converted into a convalescent home.