High Adventure & Derring Do

[ramonmercado]

Clothes of 1924 head for Everest
By Virginia Phillips
BBC Science staff



I think Mallory and Irvine did actually climb the mountain in 1924
Graham Hoyland

When mountaineer Graham Hoyland returns to Mount Everest next year, he will not be clad in modern hi-tech fibres with tog ratings and windchill factor reduction.
Instead, he'll be sporting replicas of garments last taken to the Himalayas in 1924, on the ill-fated expedition of George Mallory and Andrew (Sandy) Irvine which left both pioneers dead.

Whether they reached the summit before succumbing to Everest's harsh conditions is unclear.

They have acquired a reputation for a somewhat amateurish approach, based in part on photographs taken at base camp showing them wearing the English gentleman's attire of plus fours and tweed jackets.

Hoyland is a great nephew of another of the expedition's members, and six years ago was one of the team which discovered Mallory's final resting place.


"When we found his body it was a mixture of horror and amazement," he told the BBC's Science in Action programme.
So why would Hoyland, a seven-time Everest veteran, even be contemplating going back to the mountain with the same designs and fabrics?

Part of the answer is that Mallory and Irvine swapped their plus fours for much more appropriate attire when they began their ascent.

"Even when we found the body," said Graham Hoyland, "it was obvious that he had layer upon layer of thin garments, although the clothes were in tatters."

The layers were of silk, cotton and wool, alternating beneath an outer covering of tough gabardine.

"The typical myth of Mallory was that he was under-equipped and amateurish," said Mary Rose, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Lancaster University in the UK, who was inspired by the discovery of Mallory's body to attempt a recreation of his wardrobe.

In fact, she said: "We've found that he understood his clothing probably better than modern climbers.

"It was quite an advanced system; the silk gave wind-proofing, and the silk and woollen layers moved off each other so it was quite easy to climb."

Reconstructing the past


It's ideal for trapping air next to the skin, giving better insulation
Vanessa Anderson

Professor Rose worked closely with outdoor clothing manufacturers and researchers at other institutions.
Vanessa Anderson, a performance sportswear masters student from the University of Derby, recreated several items including Mallory's cotton leggings.

"It's a knitted fabric using a tuck stitch which gives a 3d structure - similar to a honeycomb effect," she said.

"It's ideal for trapping air next to the skin, giving better insulation."

From historical documents and the remains of Mallory's cotton leggings, Vanessa Anderson painstakingly reconstructed the 80-year old yarns and knitting patterns to recreate the garment.

She has also reconstructed the gabardine jacket which Mallory wore. It was initially developed as a shooting jacket, with a 'pivot sleeve', allowing arm movement over the head without exposing the midriff to a nasty chill; perfect for mountaineering.

Testing times

The researchers have also found that Mallory's apparel weighed much less than modern equivalents.


This, said Mary Rose, has inspired outdoor clothing manufacturers to reconsider the role of natural fibres; though the reconstructed clothes need to be tested in Himalayan conditions.
"If you simply simulate you won't understand the tacit knowledge behind the clothing," she said.

"Actually testing it in the field gets you a real sense of how the clothing performs."

This is what Graham Hoyland hopes to discover when he tries it out on Everest next year.

"I guess I will find it much easier to move across the terrain, but I imagine the wind will be really cutting," he said.

"I think Mallory and Irvine did actually climb the mountain in 1924, and certainly there's nothing in this clothing to suggest they didn't."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/s ... 470522.stm

Published: 2005/11/25 14:50:11 GMT

© BBC MMV

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I can't say the written version excites me much more than the seemingly interminable discussion of this topic on the radio during the week.

Am I being cranky and/or mean to think this is horribly dull? No offence intended to ramonmercado for posting it - I guess my reaction is more a hang-over from that endless radio version.

Maybe it was just finding the story again here with the title of the thread being what it is and all . . .

 

[Kondoru]

No, it means that the spirit of real adventure is not dead.

 

[Yithian]

Late Wings

War heroine honoured 63 years on

A female secret service agent has been honoured by the Royal Air Force - 63 years after first complaining at the "injustice" of not getting her "wings".

Pearl Cornioley, formerly Witherington, became the leader of 1,500 French freedom fighters during World War II.

She was recommended for the Military Cross but, as a woman, was not allowed to receive it. She turned down an MBE, saying it was a "civil decoration".

Now 92, she has received her Parachute Wings at her retirement home in France.

The highly-regarded award was presented to her by Squadron Leader and Major Jack Lemmon of the Parachute Regiment at a ceremony on Tuesday.

Mrs Cornioley said: "This is more important to me than receiving the CBE or MBE."

'63-year injustice'

Her wings finally materialised when she raised the issue with Squadron Leader Rhys Cowsill, a Parachute jump instructor from RAF Cranwell, who visited Mrs Cornioley in Chateauvieux, near Tours, to interview her about her wartime service.

Mrs Cornioley said that as a woman she had carried out three parachute training jumps, with the fourth jump operational.

"But the chaps did four training jumps, and the fifth was operational - and you only got your wings after a total of five jumps," she said.

"So I was not entitled - and for 63 years I have been moaning to anybody who would listen because I thought it was an injustice."

Born to British parents in Paris, Pearl Witherington had already escaped occupied France with her mother and three sisters when she returned under cover of darkness aged 29.

She was parachuted into France from 300ft (91 metres) on the third attempt - regarded as an extremely low jumping point. Other attempts had been abandoned because the situation on the ground was considered too dangerous.

At the time, Mrs Cornioley said, she was "delighted to be in one piece and back on French soil" after finally making the jump.

Sqn Ldr Cowsill, who has completed nearly 1,000 jumps, said: "If I was to jump at 300ft it would be without exception the most frightening experience I would ever undertake."

It is a tale which mirrors that of Charlotte Gray, the Sebastian Faulks novel later turned into a film.

After working as a secretary in the Air Ministry, she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1943 and was sent to work as a courier for a resistance group a few months later.

She explained her move, saying: "We'd got back to England in July 1941 and I was working in the Air Ministry. I was stuck fiddling about with papers, while things were going on in France," she said.

She said her decision to join SOE stemmed from her "fury" about what was happening in France.

In May 1944, her leader Maurice Southgate was captured by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

With the help of her fiance Henri Cornioley and under her code-name "Pauline" she reorganised the new "Wrestler network" with the aim of frustrating German movements in the run-up to the D-Day landings.

Close shave

The 1,500-strong network covered 300 square miles between Toulouse and Orleans.

"It was a complete accident that I ended up leading 1,500 resistance fighters. I was not a military person, I was supposed to be a courier, but I ended up having to use whatever sense I had - but I certainly didn't do this on my own," she said.

They were so effective, the Nazi regime put a 1 million franc (£500,000 today) bounty on her head.

Her closest shave came on 11 June 1944 when, holed up in an attic in Valencay with Mr Cornioley, they were woken by German troops.

They managed to escape under gunfire, hiding in a wheat field.

The couple eventually made it to Britain and married in Kensington Register office on 26 October, 1944.

They spent their post-war married life in France. Mr Cornioley died in 1999.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4898302.stm

Nice to see oversights like these put right. It costs nothing to the peole involved but can mean an awful lot. Aside from the numerous acts of duty and initiative detailled, the raw fact remains that - requirements be hanged - if you do a combat jump into occupied territory at a bone-breaking 300ft you have earned and deserve your wings.

 

[Yithian]

Two more facts added by the article at the Channel 4 site (linked from BBC):

- That escape in the cornfield - far from hide-and-seek - involved her 150men holding off 2,500 regular German Troops.

- As for 'disruption' of german lines, it is said that during June 1944 her network cut the railway line to Paris an absurd 800 times. That's more than an irritation for the Nazis.

 

[ramonmercado]

Sherpa breaks Mt Everest record

Appa Sherpa first climbed Mt Everest in 1989
A Nepalese sherpa has broken his own record for the most successful climbs of Mt Everest by scaling the peak for the 16th time, officials say.
Appa Sherpa, 45, reached the 8,850m (29,035ft) peak while he was guiding a team of international climbers.

He reached the peak at 1100 local time (0500GMT), the president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NPA) said.

More than 1,400 people have climbed the peak, the world's highest, since the first successful attempt in 1953.

'Historic feat'

More than 180 have died while attempting to reach the summit.

"He has broken his own record and has achieved yet another historic feat," NPA president Ang Tsering Sherpa told news agency AFP.

Sherpas, local Himalayan tribesmen, have been used as guides and porters by mountaineering teams climbing Everest.

Appa's record-breaking climb comes in the middle of the brief Everest climbing season.

Nepal's tourism ministry said 90 people - 44 foreign climbers and 46 sherpas - had climbed the mountain so far this year. Two climbers and three sherpas have died in unsuccessful attempts.

Appa first climbed the mountain in 1989.

He has used the money from each ascent to feed his family and put his four children through school for the rest of the year.

He had come out of retirement in 2003 to climb the peak again for the 50th anniversary of the first climb.

Mt Everest was first climbed by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepali sherpa Tensing Norgay on 29 May 1953.




http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4998168.stm

 

[Anonymous]

On a sad note (possibly), I hear a rumour that the Royal Geographical Society has stopped using the term 'explorer' and replaced it with the term 'outdoor geographer' or some such nonesense. I suppose explorer is a dated imperialistic term etc etc yadayadayada...

 

[ramonmercado]

On a sad note (possibly), I hear a rumour that the Royal Geographical Society has stopped using the term 'explorer' and replaced it with the term 'outdoor geographer' or some such nonesense. I suppose explorer is a dated imperialistic term etc etc yadayadayada...

or maybe its because there so little left to explore.

apart from wide tracts of the andes, rockies, himalayas etc.

 

[Anonymous]

While true that there is less to explore (in the sense of virgin territory), I believe that the nod to the change in terms is an academic/PC decision. I hear that certain Geographer's societies (and small clubs) now toast absent friends and explorers.

However, the act of going to out of the way places is still exploration - it has not only romantic connotations, but is a good and understood word to describe the function. I suppose expedition will be changed to a 'jaunt' or extra-national investigation..or somesuch nonesense.

 

[Yithian]

This latest story of a Royal Marine's serious balls here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engl ... 321647.stm

But here is one i wanted to post by way of a reminder about the 90th anniversary of the RAF. This was quite a bold commemoration 40yrs ago:

The Hawker Hunter Tower Bridge incident occurred 1968 - the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force.

As a result of the emphasis on guided missiles over manned aircraft (originating from the 1957 Defence White Paper by then British Defence Minister, Duncan Sandys), the British aircraft industry had slipped into general decline in the 1960s. Furthermore, no appropriate aerial displays had been planned to mark the anniversary of the RAF's founding. Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock, a flight commander in No. 1(F) Squadron RAF, decided to take the matter into his own hands. On 5 April 1968 he flew his Hawker Hunter (XF442) single-seater fighter over London at low level, and finally under the top span of Tower Bridge. Knowing that he was likely to be stripped of his flying status as a result of this display, he proceeded to "beat up" several airfields in inverted flight at an altitude of about 200 feet en route to his base at RAF West Raynham.

Pollock was dismissed from the RAF with no chance of an appeal. His case was finally heard in 1982 and he was partially exonerated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hun ... e_incident
adapted from: http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk ... story.html

 

[Yithian]

Lord Ashcroft - yes, he of fascinating tax-status - is also a collector of VCs. I won't cut and paste the whole article, but in the link below he provides capsule portraits of 25 medal-holders and their deeds (25 more to follow):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... -1-25.html

Edit: The final paragraph of this account brought tears to my eyes:

12) William Rhodes-Moorhouse, Victoria Cross

William Rhodes-Moorehouse, the first airman to be awarded the VC, had been fascinated with the then-new challenge of flying in the years before the First World War. During a tour of the United States, he became the first man to fly beneath the spans of California’s Golden Gate Bridge.

When war was declared, he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps, the predecessor to the RAF. With a shortage of pilots on the Western Front, Rhodes-Moorehouse joined 2 Squadron based at Merville, France. On April 22, 1915, the Germans conducted the first gas attack on the Allied troops, and for the next four days they took the initiative around St Julien and Ypres.

On April 26, Second Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorehouse was given the task of bombing the railway junction at Courtrai to prevent reinforcements reaching the German front line. He had been given one of the three targets for four planes. His flight commander advised him to drop just below cloud cover but Rhodes-Moorehouse dropped to just 300ft to ensure a direct hit. He was greeted by a volley of rifle and machine-gun fire and was badly wounded.

Rhodes-Moorehouse had a choice: to land behind enemy lines, receive medical treatment and become a prisoner of war or to try to limp back to base in his plane. It surprised nobody who knew him that he chose the second option. However, he was forced to drop to 200ft to gain extra speed and he was wounded twice more by enemy fire from the ground.

By the time he arrived back at Merville, Rhodes-Moorehouse was mortally wounded and in great pain. He made a perfect landing, but he had to be carried from his plane and soon it was clear that he was dying from a bullet wound that had ripped his stomach to pieces. Rhodes-Moorehouse died the next day and shortly afterwards the Daily Bulletin issued to the troops reported his mission had been a total success and “would appear worthy to be ranked among the most heroic stories of the world’s history”.

His posthumous VC was announced the next month. It later emerged that he had written a “first and last” letter to his newborn son before the mission suspecting he would die on it. The poignant postscript to the note read: “I am off on a trip from which I don’t expect to return but which I hope will shorten the war a bit.”

And to show they aren't all blue-blooded aristocrats:

22) Edward Mannock, Victoria Cross

Edward “Mick” Mannock was 27 years old and working as a labourer in Turkey when the Great War broke out. When Turkey entered the war on Germany’s side, he and other British workers were arrested and imprisoned. After he was regularly beaten, he tried to escape but he was caught and put into solitary confinement, where his health deteriorated.

However, the American Consulate secured his release and, by July 1915, he was back in Britain. Mannock joined the Royal Army Medical Corps but quickly showed a talent for flying. He arrived in France on April 1, 1917, and four days later joined his first operational unit, 40 Squadron.

On May 7, he had his first success when he and five others shot down a kite balloon – a manned, gas-filled balloon used for reconnaissance – five miles behind enemy lines. On May 25 and June 1, he was convinced he had “kills” but he decided to bide his time until he could make an unquestionable claim: the following week he sent an Albatross D.III crashing to earth from 13,000ft.

In September 1917, his courage and skill were rewarded with a Military Cross (MC) and a Bar (second MC) followed within a further month. In May 1918, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and later he was also awarded two Bars to the DSO. In June 1918, he was promoted to major. Mannock was shot down and killed aged 31 – after he had made what he believed was his 73rd “kill” – on July 27, 1918. He died because he disregarded his own strict rule by making a couple of low passes over the wreckage along with another pilot in a second plane. Mannock’s plane was hit and caught fire; then the left wing fell away and he plunged into a spin.

Lieutenant Donald Inglis, who had been flying with his friend and saw him die, spoke after he was forced to make a crash landing in his own aircraft. After being pulled from his battered plane, a distraught Inglis cried: “They killed him, the b------s killed my major. They killed Mick.”

Mannock was buried in an unmarked grave by a German soldier and, a year later, was awarded a posthumous VC and credited with 50 official “kills”. The citation concentrated on his efforts in June and July 1918 and praised his “fearless courage, remarkable skill, devotion to duty, and self-sacrifice, which has never been surpassed”.

 

[Yithian]

St George's Day, Shakespeare's birthday and the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Imjin River, where the Glorious Glosters did their duty, and, for the most part, died doing so.

Making a heroic last stand for the Glorious Glosters

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Imjin River, the bloodiest day of the Korean War. Neil Tweedie meets one of the brave veterans making a final pilgrimage to remember the fallen.

By Neil Tweedie 7:00AM BST 23 Apr 2011

Sam Mercer was 17 when he cycled from Cheltenham to Gloucester to join up. It was 1947 and the teenager was hungry for adventure. Told to list three regiments in order of preference, he put the Gloucestershire Regiment – the Glosters – first, followed by the Worcesters and the Warwicks. Mercer got his first choice. “Adventure? Oh I got that all right,” he says, a twinkle in his one remaining eye. “I got that in spades”.

Today, St George’s Day, Mr Mercer will be standing at the foot of that hill remembering those who fought and died there exactly 60 years ago. In 1951, at the height of the Korean War, it was Hill 235, a vantage point overlooking crossings on the Imjin River. That piece of high ground would soon earn a new name, Gloster Hill, as the scene of the most desperate action fought by the British Army since the Second World War.

The stand made by 1st Bn The Gloucestershire Regiment – the “Glorious Glosters” as headline writers called them – in the face of massed human-wave attacks by Chinese communist troops ranks alongside Rorke’s Drift as an example of steadfastness in the face of overwhelming odds. For three days, between April 22 to 25, 750 men of the battalion repulsed successive assaults by a force seven times bigger. Surrounded, with no hope of rescue, running short on water and ammunition, the men from the West Country fought literally to the last bullet and grenade. Some 620 failed to make it back to friendly lines. A third of the battalion were killed or wounded, the survivors spending the next two years in Chinese or North Korean prison camps.

The destruction of the Glosters was the most dramatic episode during the Battle of the Imjin River, in which the 4,000-strong British 29th Brigade held off 27,000 Chinese attackers at a cost of 1,000 casualties over three days. Yet little attention is being paid to the 100 or so elderly men gathered in South Korea this weekend to commemorate the 60th anniversary.

“The British Army lost more men in Korea than in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts combined,” says Andrew Salmon, author of a book on the battle, To the Last Round. “Imjin River was the bloodiest British battle of the Korean War – an entire battalion was wiped out – yet it is dead to modern memory. The British public learn history from popular culture, and Imjin never featured in a film or best-seller.”

Mr Mercer, 81, is unconcerned. “This is a personal duty, probably my last chance to visit the battlefield,” he says. “I’m not interested in who turns up but I’m going to take the full roll of honour and read out all those names: Pat Angier, Philip Curtis, Richard Reeve-Tucker and the others.”

Part of the Japanese Empire, Korea was divided into the communist North and Western-backed South in 1945, an uneasy peace enduring until June 1950 when the Soviet-equipped army of Kim Il-sung flooded across the 38th Parallel. South Korean and American forces fighting under the UN flag were forced into a small pocket before an amphibious landing at Inchon wrong-footed the North Koreans, sending them back to the Chinese border. Victory was within grasp when Mao Tse-tung’s masses intervened at the end of the year, driving UN forces south once more. By the time of the Battle of the Imjin, the front had stabilised roughly along the line of the old border.

The UN armies were severely undermanned and 29th Brigade, operating under American command, was strung out in the hills north-west of Seoul, holding a front so wide that it required an entire division. Separated from the rest of the brigade by a gaping hole in the line, the Glosters were vulnerable to encirclement. Nemesis duly arrived in the form of the Chinese 63rd Shock Army, tasked with punching its way through the UN lines towards the battered South Korean capital. In preparation for their spring offensive, the Chinese had sent observers deep into the heart of the isolated British positions – so close that they were able to enjoy a Doris Day film being shown to troops.

“We were holding positions that the Chinese were determined to take, and they didn’t care how many men they lost to get them,” says Mr Mercer. “Mao Tse-tung was not one for public opinion.” The viciousness of the fighting matched anything seen at Imphal or Kohima. Two Victoria Crosses, one awarded to Lt-Col James Carne, commanding officer of the Glosters, testify to its intensity.

“The fighting in Korea was the most nightmarish British soldiers have experienced in recent history,” says Mr Salmon. “Close-quarter, at night, against the Chinese human wave. The trauma continues to this day: six decades on and veterans still sleep with the lights on.”

Mr Mercer does not suffer nightmares. “I was enjoying it. I know that is a strange thing to say but it was what I had joined up to do. We had a good battalion. Carne didn’t say a lot; he didn’t use three words when two would do – a rare quality – but it was all going on upstairs in his head. He was coolness itself under fire. We had our orders and, as one of the men said: 'Don’t worry sir, we’ll be like the Rock of Gibraltar’.”

Sleepless for three days, the young Private Mercer witnessed numerous acts of heroism as the battle raged around the shrinking British perimeter, but one incident stands out. On the first night of the battle, Lt Philip Curtis, 24, was confronted with a Chinese-held bunker which threatened his unit’s retreat to safer ground. Severely wounded during his single-handed attempt to storm the strongpoint, he was dragged to safety by his men. But he struggled free, advanced again and managed to lob a grenade into the mouth of the bunker – just as the machine gun cut him down. His gallantry earned him a posthumous VC.

“The feeling in the platoon was that the first time we hit serious trouble we’d lose Mr Curtis,” says Mr Mercer. “He preferred to lead from the front with rifle and bayonet rather than from the back with a revolver. He had lost his wife during childbirth and there may have been some other source of sadness. He was a good man.”

The battle ended for Mr Mercer on the third night when he was severely wounded in the eye and leg by a mortar round. Falling into a deep sleep at the dressing station, he awoke to daylight and silence. The battle had ended after Carne, his position untenable, ordered his men to escape through the Chinese lines. Few succeeded.

The young British soldier was discovered by two Chinese, one of whom shot him in the leg. Blind in one eye, he received little treatment during his captivity. Following his release, he was admitted to hospital in London, where doctors amputated his leg below the knee. The nurse who cared for him became his wife.

“I would not want to go through it again but I’m glad that I did. You learn a lot about human beings.” But to be maimed at such an age? “All part of life’s rich tapestry. I lost and eye and a leg but gained a wife.”

Members of other units, notably the Royal Ulster Rifles and the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, have expressed frustration at the lack of attention paid to the sacrifices of their units. “It does rankle with one or two people,” says Mr Mercer. “I don’t know who thought of 'Glorious Glosters’ but it wasn’t us. It was a brigade battle and we were all in it together.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... sters.html

I'll be raising a glass to them shortly.

 

[Kondoru]

Hurrah!

The Korean war deserves tio be remembered more, if only for the fact there was a lot of old and new technology used. (Last war for Spitfires, and indeed prop planes in general)

 

[ramonmercado]

Carve his name with pride.

An Irishman's Diary
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opi ... 47954.html
Frank McNally

Fri, Apr 22, 2011

IN THE TOWN where I grew up there used to be a butcher named Woods. He was gone long before my time, having moved to England with his family – including their son William (then 12 years old) – in 1925. And they might never have been heard of again locally except that William later joined the RAF and became what every schoolboy knows as a “fighter ace” in the second World War.

Now nicknamed “Timber”, he began his exploits with the defence of Malta in the summer of 1940, during which he shot down several Italian planes, enough to win a Distinguished Flying Cross in December of that year. Then he was posted to Greece where Mussolini, peeved at Hitler’s failure to consult him about anything, had embarked on one of his own adventures.

The Italians were soon in trouble, thanks partly to the Greeks’ heroic resistance and also to Woods and his comrades. Despite flying outdated biplanes, the RAF gave the invaders a torrid time. But this in turn brought the Luftwaffe into Greece, at which point the RAF’s luck ran out.

The Germans invaded from the north on April 6th. Within a fortnight they were on the outskirts of Athens. And for Timber Woods and others, the end came 70 years ago this week, when they were ordered into the skies over the Greek capital in a doomed attempt to slow the assault.

His life’s closing scenes were at least well recorded, because among those up there with him was Roald Dahl. Yes, before he became a famous author of children’s stories, Dahl was also a fighter ace. In time he would be critical of the recklessness with which the military establishment expended both men and machines in such lost causes.

But like all ace pilots, he must have had a certain recklessness himself. He would also recall the Battle of Athens as “a long and beautiful dogfight in which 15 Hurricanes fought for half an hour between 150 and 200 German bombers and fighters”. Which, at least in terms of the competing numbers, was an accurate summary.

In a biography by Donald Sturrock, Dahl gives a more detailed description of that chaotic 30 minutes: “It was truly the most breathless and exhilarating time I have ever had in my life. I caught glimpses of planes with black smoke pouring from their engines. I saw planes with pieces of metal flying off their fuselages. I saw the bright red flashes coming from the wings of the Messerschmitts as they fired their guns and once I saw a man whose Hurricane was in flames climb calmly out onto a wing and jump off.” Somewhere in the midst of the frenzy, Woods was attacked by what one witness called a “swarm” of German Junkers and Messerschmitts. Battle- hardened as he was, he had no chance. His blazing Hurricane was last seen plunging into Elevsis Bay, just west of Athens.

Following him into the water moments later was his commanding officer, the South African-born Marmaduke Pattle, who had been trying to protect Woods when he was himself hit simultaneously by fire from two Messerschmitts. Better know as Pat Pattle, he is widely credited as the RAF’s most successful pilot of the war, shooting down 40-odd enemy planes. By some accounts he had just claimed his 50th when his own aircraft exploded.

It was April 20th, 1941, Hitler’s 52nd birthday. The Germans occupied Athens shortly afterwards and opinion is still divided as to whether the Greek campaign fatally delayed Hitler’s invasion of Russia, or whether it was a futile exercise by the Allies. Dahl had mixed feelings, bitterly regretting the unnecessary loss of life while also priding himself in the verdict of one historian, who suggested that the heroism of the pilots over Athens ranked alongside anything in the Battle of Britain.

With one or two exceptions, Dahl does not say much about the personalities of those with whom he fought. He was a late entry into the battle and by then, most of the pilots had been fighting for months in a campaign that was now unravelling. On the first evening, he found them uncommunicative: “They were all very quiet. There was no larking about. There were just a few muttered remarks about the pilots who had not come back that day. Nothing else.” But he did later give the name of Timber Woods to one of his fictional characters. In the 1954 short story, Poison , the narrator is so identified, although the action is not set in any war. Poison is, however, one of the many stories Dahl wrote for adults and there are shades of Hemingway in its style and dark subject matter.

Set in India, it revolves around an incident in which another character, Harry Pope, mistakenly thinks a krait – a small, very poisonous rock snake – has crawled under his bed-sheet and is now asleep on his stomach. The local doctor is called, but after a painstaking ritual in which Pope is pre-injected with serum and the bed-sheets soaked with chloroform to drug the reptile, no snake is found. Whereupon the real poison of the situation is revealed to be Pope’s racist contempt for the doctor who dares to suggest he imagined the whole thing. If the story is a tribute to the war-time Woods, the honour may not extend beyond his name. That said, there is a hint that the narrator is a former RAF man – he compares Pope’s facial expression to the suffering a pilot he once saw shot in the stomach. And he does emerge as a kind-of hero: a stoic, Hemingwayesque figure who recognises something ugly in his friend and tries to assuage the doctor’s hurt feelings as, put back in his place by the arrogant patient, he drives away.

 

[uair01]

or maybe its because there so little left to explore.
apart from wide tracts of the andes, rockies, himalayas etc.

I vehemently disagree! There is unexplored territory right under your feet. I've been writing a blog entry about this at this very moment (really). So I will publish it earlier than I had planned, to make my point

http://uair01.blogspot.com/2011/04/line-of-sight-exploration.html

 

[Yithian]

I came across an old obituary. When you read the words VC & bar, you know you should expect to read something extraordinary:

Captain Charles Upham VC & Bar
Captain Charles Upham, who has died aged 86, twice won the Victoria Cross.

12:01AM GMT 23 Nov 1994

Only three men have ever won double VCs, and the other two were medical officers: Col A Martin-Leake, who received the decoration in the Boer War and the First World War; and Capt N G Chavasse, who was killed in France in 1917. Chavasse's family was related to Upham's.

For all his remarkable exploits on the battlefield, Upham was a shy and modest man, embarrassed when asked about the actions he had been decorated for. "The military honours bestowed on me," he said, "are the property of the men of my unit."

In a television interview in 1983 he said he would have been happier not to have been awarded a VC at all, as it made people expect too much of him. "I don't want to be treated differently from any other bastard," he insisted.

When King George VI was conferring Upham's second VC he asked Maj-Gen Sir Howard Kippenberger, his commanding officer: "Does he deserve it?"

"In my respectful opinion, Sir," replied Kippenberger, "Upham won this VC several times over."

A great-great nephew of William Hazlitt, and the son of a British lawyer who practised in New Zealand, Charles Hazlitt Upham was born in Christchurch on Sept 21 1908.

Upham was educated at the Waihi Preparatory School, Christ's College and Canterbury Agricultural College, which he represented at rugby and rowing.

He then spent six years as a farm manager, musterer and shepherd, before becoming a government valuer in 1937.

In 1939 he volunteered for the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force as a private in the 20th Battalion and became a sergeant in the first echelon advance party. Commissioned in 1940, he went on to serve in Greece, Crete and the Western Desert.

Upham won his first VC on Crete in May 1941, commanding a platoon in the battle for Maleme airfield. During the course of an advance of 3,000 yards his platoon was held up three times. Carrying a bag of grenades (his favourite weapon), Upham first attacked a German machine-gun nest, killing eight paratroopers, then destroyed another which had been set up in a house. Finally he crawled to within 15 yards of a Bofors anti-aircraft gun before knocking it out.

When the advance had been completed he helped carry a wounded man to safety in full view of the enemy, and then ran half a mile under fire to save a company from being cut off. Two Germans who tried to stop him were killed.

The next day Upham was wounded in the shoulder by a mortar burst and hit in the foot by a bullet. Undeterred, he continued fighting and, with his arm in a sling, hobbled about in the open to draw enemy fire and enable their gun positions to be spotted.

With his unwounded arm he propped his rifle in the fork of a tree and killed two approaching Germans; the second was so close that he fell on the muzzle of Upham's rifle.

During the retreat from Crete, Upham succumbed to dysentery and could not eat properly. The effect of this and his wounds made him look like a walking skeleton, his commanding officer noted. Nevertheless he found the strength to climb the side of a 600 ft deep ravine and use a Bren gun on a group of advancing Germans.

At a range of 500 yards he killed 22 out of 50. His subsequent VC citation recorded that he had "performed a series of remarkable exploits, showing outstanding leadership, tactical skill and utter indifference to danger". Even under the hottest fire, Upham never wore a steel helmet, explaining that he could never find one to fit him.

His second VC was earned on July 15 1942, when the New Zealanders were concluding a desperate defence of the Ruweisat ridge in the 1st Battle of Alamein. Upham ran forward through a position swept by machine-gun fire and lobbed grenades into a truck full of German soldiers.

When it became urgently necessary to take information to advance units which had become separated, Upham took a Jeep on which a captured German machine-gun was mounted and drove it through the enemy position.

At one point the vehicle became bogged down in the sand, so Upham coolly ordered some nearby Italian soldiers to push it free. Though they were somewhat surprised to be given an order by one of the enemy, Upham's expression left them in no doubt that he should be obeyed.

By now Upham had been wounded, but not badly enough to prevent him leading an attack on an enemy strong-point, all the occupants of which were then bayoneted. He was shot in the elbow, and his arm was broken. The New Zealanders were surrounded and outnumbered, but Upham carried on directing fire until he was wounded in the legs and could no longer walk.

Taken prisoner, he proved such a difficult customer that in 1944 he was confined in Colditz Castle, where he remained for the rest of the war. His comments on Germans were always sulphurous.

For his actions at Ruweisat he was awarded a Bar to his VC. His citation noted that "his complete indifference to danger and his personal bravery have become a byword in the whole of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force".

After his release from Colditz in 1945 Upham went to England and inquired about the whereabouts of one Mary ("Molly") McTamney, from Dunedin. Told that she was a Red Cross nurse in Germany, he was prepared, for her sake, to return to that detested country. In the event she came to England, where they were married in June 1945.

Back in New Zealand, Upham resisted invitations to take up politics. In appreciation of his heroism the sum of £10,000 was raised to buy him a farm. He appreciated the tribute, but declined the money, which was used to endow the Charles Upham Scholarship Fund to send sons of ex-servicemen to university.

Fiercely determined to avoid all publicity, Upham at first refused to return to Britain for a victory parade in 1946, and only acceded at the request of New Zealand's Prime Minister.

Four years later he resisted even the Prime Minister's persuasion that he should go to Greece to attend the opening of a memorial for the Australians and New Zealanders who had died there – although he eventually went at Kippenberger's request.

In 1946, Upham bought a farm at Rafa Downs, some 100 miles north of Christchurch beneath the Kaikoura Mountains, where he had worked before the war. There he found the anonymity he desired.

In 1962, he was persuaded to denounce the British government's attempt to enter the Common Market: "Britain will gradually be pulled down and down," Upham admonished, "and the whole English way of life will be in danger." He reiterated the point in 1971: "Your politicians have made money their god, but what they are buying is disaster."

He added: "They'll cheat you yet, those Germans."

Upham and his wife had three daughters, including twins.

Published November 23 1994

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... d-Bar.html

 

[Spudrick68]

That is a truly humbling read.

 

[Cochise]

For those looking for high adventure coupled with what we like to think of as a British level of stubbornness combined with barking madness, can I direct your attention to the exploits of various early automobilists, mostly characterised for taking heavy unsuitable vehicles on journeys were it would be a darn sight quicker to walk?

There is the Peking to Paris race in (I think) 1908, (I should point out that the participants were not British, but could perhaps have qualified for honorary citizenship on the available evidence, particularly one Auguste Pons who set out on the 3.000 mile journey on a motorised tricycle. Although perhaps the poor chap is disqualified because after numerous difficulties culminating in nearly dying in the Gobi Desert and being rescued by fortuitously passing nomads he gave up. Weak as water).

Then there are the exploits of the Australian Francis Birtles who first drove across Australia and then attempted to drive from London to Sydney in 1927, and perhaps above all the exploits of the Court-Treatt's in attempting to drive from the Cape to Cairo:

http://www.crossley-motors.org.uk/histo ... index.html

in hopelessly ill equipped vehicles, taking best part of two years, in the course of which they were overtaken by a French expedition which had started a year later and finished before them. (The French were properly equipped with half-tracks, which the British Court-Treatt's no doubt regarded as cheating).

 

[Yithian]

John Capes

Submarine escape: A WWII survival tale from Kefalonia
By Tim Clayton Military historian

Seventy years ago, off the Greek island of Kefalonia, the British submarine HMS Perseus hit an Italian mine, sparking one of the greatest and most controversial survival stories of World War II.

The clear waters of the Mediterranean were a death trap for British submarines in World War II.

Some were bombed from the air, others hunted with sonar and depth charges, and many, perhaps most, collided with mines.

Two fifths of the subs that ventured into the Mediterranean were sunk and when a submarine sank it became a communal coffin - everyone on board died. That was the rule.

In fact, during the whole of the war there were only four escapes from stricken British submarines. And the most remarkable of these took place on 6 December 1941, when HMS Perseus plummeted to the seabed.
Enigma

When she left the British submarine base at Malta at the end of November 1941, HMS Perseus had on board her 59 crew and two passengers, one of whom was John Capes, a 31-year-old Navy stoker en route to Alexandria.
John Capes John Capes: Stoker on the Perseus

Tall, dark, handsome and a bit of an enigma, Capes had been educated at Dulwich College, and as the son of a diplomat he would naturally have been officer class rather than one of the lowliest of the mechanics who looked after the engines.

On the rough winter night of 6 December, Perseus was on the surface of the sea 3km (two miles) off the coast of Kefalonia, recharging her batteries under cover of darkness in preparation for another day underwater.

According to newspaper articles Capes later wrote or contributed to, he was relaxing in a makeshift bunk converted from a spare torpedo tube when, with no warning, there was a devastating explosion.

The boat twisted, plunged, and hit the bottom with what Capes described as a "nerve-shattering jolt".

His bunk reared up and threw him across the compartment. The lights went out.

Capes guessed they had hit a mine. Finding that he could stand, he groped for a torch. In the increasingly foul air and rising water of the engine room he found "the mangled bodies of a dozen dead".

But that was as far as he could get. The engine room door was forced shut by the pressure of water on the other side. "It was creaking under the great pressure. Jets and trickles from the rubber joint were seeping through," said Capes.

He dragged any stokers who showed signs of life towards the escape hatch and fitted them and himself with Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus, a rubber lung with an oxygen bottle, mouthpiece and goggles.

The depth at which British WWII submariners escaped:

HMS Umpire sank near Norfolk, England on 19 July 1941. Escapees: 14-15
HMS Stratagem sank near Malacca, Malaysia on 22 November 1944. Escapees: 10
HMS Perseus sank near Kefalonia, Greece on 6 December 1941. Escapees: 1
HMS P32 sank near Tripoli, Libya on 18 August 1941 (but the wreck was discovered only in 1999). Escapees: 2

This equipment had only been tested to a depth of 100ft (30m). The depth gauge showed just over 270ft, and as far as Capes knew, no-one had ever made an escape from such a depth.

In fact the gauge was broken, over-estimating the depth by 100ft, but time was running out. It was difficult to breathe now.

He flooded the compartment, lowered the canvas trunk beneath the escape hatch and with great difficulty released the damaged bolts on the hatch.

He pushed his injured companions into the trunk, up through the hatch and away into the cold sea above. Then he took a last swig of rum from his blitz bottle, ducked under and passed through the hatch himself.

"I let go, and the buoyant oxygen lifted me quickly upward. Suddenly I was alone in the middle of the great ocean.

"The pain became frantic, my lungs and whole body as fit to burst apart. Agony made me dizzy. How long can I last?

"Then, with the suddenness of certainty, I burst to the surface and wallowed in a slight swell with whitecaps here and there."

But having made the deepest escape yet recorded, his ordeal was not over.

His fellow injured stokers had not made it to the surface with him so he found himself alone in the middle of a cold December sea.

In the darkness he spotted a band of white cliffs and realised he had no choice but to strike out for those.
Story doubted

The next morning, Capes was found unconscious by two fishermen on the shore of Kefalonia.

For the following 18 months he was passed from house to house, to evade the Italian occupiers. He lost 70lb (32kg) in weight and dyed his hair black in an effort to blend in.

He recalled later: "Always, at the moment of despair, some utterly poor but friendly and patriotic islander would risk the lives of all his family for my sake.

"They even gave me one of their prize possessions, a donkey called Mareeka. There was one condition attached to her - I had to take a solemn vow not to eat her."

He was finally taken off the island on a fishing boat in May 1943, in a clandestine operation organised by the Royal Navy.

A dangerous, roundabout journey of 640km took him to Turkey and from there back to the submarine service in Alexandria.

Despite being awarded a medal for his escape, Capes's story was so extraordinary that many people, both within and outside the Navy, doubted it.

Was he really on the boat at all? After all, he was not on the crew list. And submarine commanders had been ordered to bolt escape hatches shut from the outside to prevent them lifting during depth charge attacks.

There were no witnesses, he had a reputation as a great storyteller, and his own written accounts after the war varied in their details.

And the depth gauge reading 270ft made his story all the harder to believe.

John Capes died in 1985 but it was not until 1997 that his story was finally verified.

In a series of dives to the wreck of Perseus, Kostas Thoctarides discovered Capes's empty torpedo tube bunk, the hatch and compartment exactly as he had described it, and finally, his blitz bottle from which he had taken that last fortifying swig of rum.

Tim Clayton is the author of Sea Wolves: the Extraordinary Story of Britain's WW2 Submarines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15959067

Louis de Bernières documentary about Capes here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017mx3x

 

[Yithian]

FORT POLK, La. -- A Soldier with 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (LI) was awarded the Silver Star on Friday for his actions under fire that saved the lives of two comrades in Afghanistan.

Sgt. Timothy Gilboe, a member of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, also is credited with helping to eliminate a high-value target after engaging in hand-to-hand combat with an insurgent.

The Silver Star is the third-highest medal a Soldier can receive. It is bestowed for extreme valor in the face of the enemy.

The 2-4 Infantry was based in the Jaghato District, Wardak Province in Afghanistan. According to Lt. Col. Tom Rickard, 2-4 Infantry commander, the unit had been conducting combat operations in the Tangi Valley in early April to prevent the enemy from running supplies through Jaghato to Chak. In mid-April, the unit conducted a joint operation with Polish forces in Jaghato, which led to the events of April 28.

Gilboe's platoon was conducting a patrol near the village of Awalata when they came under fire, and, in battle, wounded a couple of insurgents. As they were maneuvering to assess the situation, they came under further attack.

They were walking by some buildings when two more insurgents charged them from about 30 feet away. The insurgents fired more than 60 rounds of ammunition at them, mortally wounding the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Matt Hermanson. At the same time, shots hit the assistant machine gunner's rucksack, setting it on fire.

The squad returned fire, forcing the insurgents back, and Gilboe turned his attention to extinguishing the fire in the rucksack, which was filled with ammunition. While he and the assistant gunner were occupied with that task, insurgents tried to rush them again. A teammate, an Air Force joint terminal attack controller assigned to 1st Platoon, shot one of the insurgents, but the other was within 10 meters of Gilboe and coming fast.

Instinct apparently took over, and Gilboe charged the remaining insurgent. Gilboe had put his weapon down to fight the rucksack fire, and he realized he would have no chance to retrieve it before the enemy closed, so he engaged the enemy with the only weapons he had … his hands and mind.

Gilboe reached out and grabbed the barrel of the enemy's AK-47 and pulled it toward his chest, which was covered by an armor plate. He said the last thing that ran through his mind before the enemy pulled the trigger was "This is gonna hurt a lot."

The insurgent fired a burst directly into Gilboe's chest plate, knocking the wind out of him and sending shrapnel into his legs. Out of breath and fighting hand to hand, Gilboe disarmed the insurgent and hit him in the face several times, stunning him and allowing the assistant gunner time and opportunity to kill him.

Gilboe was wounded, but so were his squad and platoon leaders. He took charge of the remaining squad members, cleared the area and set up a security perimeter. Without regard to his own wounds, he rendered first aid to the wounded and cared for them until the medic could prepare them for evacuation. Gilboe helped load the wounded on the medevac helicopters, and only then did he allow himself to be treated and removed from the area.

His Silver Star citation reads that he "demonstrated exemplary bravery and leadership under extreme pressure." When his life and the lives of his fellow Soldiers were on the line, Gilboe aggressively took the fight to the enemy and came out victorious. Because of his actions, two Soldiers' lives were saved and a high-value target was eliminated from the battle.

http://www.army.mil/article/71194/4th_B ... for_valor/

 

[krakenten]

Read "The Flashman Papers", fiction, but a good overview if the times, and attitudes.

And also, a lot of fun!

 

[Yithian]

Get your banter ear in tune:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKYL0tW-Ek

Squadron Leader Mike Stephens was climbing out of his burning Hurricane high above the Western Desert. He had been injured in both feet and much of his fighter’s engine and half the cockpit had been shot away by an enemy aircraft.

But when the Luftwaffe pilot who had attacked him flew past, Stephens climbed back into his plane and shot the enemy Messerschmitt down.

It was only then that he jumped to safety, and by that stage he was on fire himself. He beat the flames out as he parachuted to the ground, landing just 300 yards from the German front line. He hobbled towards friendly lines in the Western Desert before being picked up by Polish troops.

Stephens was awarded a Distinguished Service Order for his heroics. He was just 22 years old.

The action, in December 1941, over Acroma, Libya, was one of many acts of bravery carried out by the “ace” who shot down an estimated 22 enemy aircraft during the war.

As well as the DSO, he won the Distinguished Flying Cross with two bars.

His medals, as well as other mementoes including his log book, photographs and a flying helmet with oxygen mask are being sold by his son, and are expected to sell for £50,000 at the Dix Noonan Webb saleroom in Mayfair, London, on June 27-28.

Stephens, who went on to become a group captain, holds a special place in wartime aviation because he was admitted to three informal “clubs” for RAF pilots.

They were the Caterpillar Club, for those who bailed out with a parachute; the Goldfish Club, for those who bailed out into water; and the Flying Boot Club, for those who came down in the desert and had to walk to friendly lines.

David Erskine-Hill, of Dix Noonan Webb, said: “The remarkable wartime career of Mike Stephens epitomises the sustained gallantry displayed by the young pilots of Fighter Command.

It was a career encompassing several hundred combat sorties and the award of four decorations for gallantry – only 15 airmen received the combination of a DSO and DFC with 2 Bars in the 1939-45 war.”

Stephens graduated from RAF Cranwell, Lincs, in 1939 and was posted to France where he was quickly in the thick of the action, shooting down enemy planes.

Returning from his final sortie in France he had 6in shot off one of his propeller blades but landed the unsteady machine at the airfield.

When told that he could not take off with the propeller damage and the plane would have to be destroyed, he had 6in taken off the other end of the propeller and flew it back to Britain.

He saw service in Turkey and north Africa and, in October 1942, volunteered to go to Malta where he came close to death again, as his logbook records.

He wrote:

“Squirting 109 good and proper, got him smoking when a Spit (Stead) pulled up in front of me, so had to stop. Shot the port wing off another at 7,000, then later was bounced by a 109 who damaged my engine. Flew on a little way and then had to bail out. Trouble with dinghy, picked up after 3 hours. Moral – know your dinghy drill!”

He did not add that the dinghy operation was made especially difficult by the fact that he kept his left hand in the air throughout because he was wearing a watch that his parents had bought him and he did not want to break it.

In May 1943 Stephens was awarded his third DFC and returned home and saw no further action. He retired from the RAF in 1960 and worked in the aero-engines division of Rolls-Royce in Paris.

He retired with his wife Violet to the south of France before they returned to live out their days in Britain. She died in 2000 and he died in 2004, aged 84.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/brit ... eaten.html

 

[ramonmercado]

What a guy! You really couldn't make this stuff up!

 

[Yithian]

It's so sad that I only learn of these people through their obituaries. If we want to inspire our children to learn about the Second World War, why not tell true tales such as that of this amazingly brave French patriot. There are so many threads in this story that could spark a flame of interest in a schoolboy:

Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, who has died aged 88, escaped from Occupied France to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE); parachuted back on sabotage missions, he twice faced execution, only to escape on both occasions, once dressed as a Nazi guard.

5:48PM BST 29 Jun 2012

Other disguises also came in useful. On the run in occupied Bordeaux he dressed as a nun. In later life he helped Maurice Papon to flee to Switzerland.

Robert Jean-Marie de La Rochefoucauld was born in Paris on September 16 1923, one of 10 children of an aristocratic family which lived in old-fashioned splendour on Avenue de la Bourdonnais, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. An ancestor was François de La Rochefoucauld, famous for his maxims. Robert’s mother (née Wendel) was daughter of the Duke of Maillé. His father’s family retained a private carriage which was hitched on to trains during rail journeys.

Considered a sickly child, Robert was sent to a succession of private schools for the jeunesse dorée in Switzerland and Austria where, in 1938, he was taken on a school trip to Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s Alpine retreat. When Hitler’s convoy drew up, the Fuhrer approached and patted Robert on the cheek affectionately. It was, La Rochefoucauld later recalled, a dream come true for his 15 year-old self. Hitler was then the great statesman of Europe; young Robert and his schoolmates had attached swastikas to their bicycles in admiration.

La Rochefoucauld was back in France when the Nazis invaded. His father was taken prisoner; the rest of the family took refuge in the Chateau de Villeneuve, east of Paris. Furious at the Occupation, La Rochefoucauld protested long and loud until he was warned to keep quiet by a friendly postman, who had intercepted a letter denouncing the young man to the Nazis.

La Rochefoucauld made contact with the Resistance in the spring of 1942, keen to find a route to join Free French forces in England. He took the pseudonym René Lallier and travelled, via Vichy and Perpignan, to the Pyrenees, where he accompanied two British airmen over the Col de Perthuis into Spain. Immediately arrested, the three spent two months in jail before Major Eric Piquet-Wicks, head of recruiting French nationals for SOE, arrived from the British embassy in Madrid and arranged for the three to be released.

It was at the embassy that La Rochefoucauld was invited to join SOE. “The courage and skill of British agents is without equal,” he recalled the ambassador noting. “It is just that their French accents are appalling.”

After meeting de Gaulle to ask his permission to join British forces (“Do it,” came the reply. “Even allied to the Devil, it’s for La France.”) La Rochefoucauld began his training early in 1943 at RAF Ringway, near Manchester, where he learned to parachute and use small arms and explosives, as well as how to kill a man with the flat of his hand. Experienced safe-crackers were brought out of jail to show the recruits the art of breaking and entering. In June he was considered ready for his first mission.

Dropped into the Morvan with two British agents, including one radio operator, La Rochefoucauld teamed up with a Maquis group near Avallon led by a man who called himself The Pope. After destroying the electrical substation at Avallon, and blowing up railway tracks, La Rochefoucauld was awaiting exfiltration by the RAF when he was denounced and arrested. After a series of interrogations, he was condemned to death.

En route to his execution in Auxerre, La Rochefoucauld made a break, leaping from the back of the truck carrying him to his doom, and dodging the bullets fired by his two guards. Sprinting through the empty streets, he found himself in front of the Gestapo’s headquarters, where a chauffeur was pacing near a limousine bearing the swastika flag. Spotting the key in the ignition, La Rochefoucauld jumped in and roared off, following the Route Nationale past the prison he had left an hour earlier.

He smashed through a roadblock before dumping the car and circling back towards Auxerre on foot under cover of night. He sheltered with an epicier. From Auxerre, friends in the Resistance helped him on to a train for Paris, where he evaded German soldiers hunting him by curling up underneath the sink in the lavatory. “When we arrived in Paris I felt drunk with freedom,” he recalled.

Taking refuge with an aunt and uncle, both of whom had assumed he was dead, La Rochefoucauld spent a month rebuilding his strength before, in February 1944, recontacting SOE, which ordered him to the Calais coast, then on high alert for the expected Allied invasion, to be extracted by submarine. After a successful rendezvous off Berck, La Rochefoucauld enjoyed a convivial evening with the crew, only to find himself obliged to stay on-board for three days while the sub completed a patrol. Those days of confinement, he wrote, were among his “worst of the war”. When the vessel came under depth charge attack, La Rochefoucauld noted later, he had “never been so scared in my life”.

Back in London, however, he found a city celebrating a victory that many assumed was just around the corner. “We were invited to the best houses,” he recalled. “Girls fell into our arms.” By May he was ready to be parachuted back into France, charged with blowing up the vast munitions factory at Saint-Médard near Bordeaux ahead of D-Day.

The mission, code-named “Sun”, saw La Rochefoucauld infiltrate the factory dressed as one of the workers there. Over four days he smuggled in 40 kilos of explosives, concealed in hollowed-out loaves of bread and specially designed shoes. On Thursday May 20, La Rochefoucauld linked the charges and set timers before scaling a wall and pedalling to safety on a bicycle. The blast was heard for miles. After sending a message to London (the reply read simply: “Félicitations”) he enjoyed several good bottles with the local Resistance leader, waking the next day with a hangover.

Cycling to Bordeaux to meet a contact who was to arrange his return to England, however, he ran into a roadblock, taken prisoner, and imprisoned at the 16th-century Fort du Hâ. His explanations that he had been out after dark on a romantic assignation were not believed and, in his cell, La Rochefoucauld considered swallowing the cyanide pill concealed in the heel of his shoe.

Instead he faked an epileptic fit and, when the guard opened the door to his cell, hit him over the head with a table leg before breaking his neck. (“Thank Goodness for that pitilessly efficient training,” he noted). After putting on the German’s uniform, La Rochefoucauld walked into the guardroom and shot the two other German jailers. He then simply walked out of the fort, through the deserted town, and to the address of an underground contact.

Once there, however, he found that joining the rest of his escape line was impossible, as checks and patrols had been stepped up. Then the man harbouring him, whose sister was a nun, suggested that La Rochefoucauld slip into her habit. Thus dressed, he slowly walked through the city, eventually knocking on the door of Roger Landes, code-named Aristide, a bilingual Briton whom he hoped would take care of his return to England. In fact, Aristide’s orders were to hide La Rochefoucauld. D-Day was days away, and he was, by his own admission, “the last of their worries in London”.

He was consigned instead to a woodcutter in the Landes but, bored with the work, joined a local Resistance group. Arrested once more, he was taken to a guardpost only to find himself in a storm of machine-gun fire. It turned out to be coming from fellow resistants, who had launched an immediate operation to free him. He emerged unscathed. “I had what I needed more than anything else,” he said later. “Luck.”

By August 1944 the Germans had abandoned Bordeaux. In the city La Rochefoucauld found men in glorious French uniform in every café; on the streets, others wore holsters. “It seemed the heroes were two a penny, now that the danger had passed,” he noted. “The ostentation made me feel sick.”

He joined the Charly group of the Resistance, harassing the German lines. One night he opened the door of an apparently deserted building, only for a German soldier to open a door opposite at exactly the same moment. In the gloom, each man fired four or fire shots at the other, missed, and simply retreated through the doors they had come through. For La Rochefoucauld, the incident illustrated the sometimes farcical nature of war.

His final behind-the-lines assault came in April 1945, when he led an night raid to knock out a casemate near St-Vivien-du Médoc, on France’s western coast at the mouth of the Gironde. Paddling up the river, he approached the casemate, killed a guard there, and blew it up, forcing the Germans to pull back to their final defensive position on the sea at Verdon.

La Rochefoucauld was unable to witness the final victory. On April 19 1945 he was wounded in the knee after a mine explosion. In August, recovered, he travelled to Villeneuve to rejoin his family.

After a month’s leave, La Rochefoucauld turned occupier himself, as ADC to General Roger Noiret. In Berlin Marshal Zhukov, then commander of the Soviet zone of occupation, invited Noiret and La Rochefoucauld to a party. After mishearing La Rochefoucauld’s name as La Rochezhukov, the Soviet hero, known for his fondness for vodka, kissed La Rochefoucauld, Soviet style, full on the lips.

La Rochefoucauld was demobilised in 1946 in the rank of captain but immediately recruited into the French secret services. After training near Orleans, he volunteered for a tour of duty in Indo-China, leading commando raids against the Viet Minh. But his methods, which included launching ambushes dressed as a Viet, were frowned upon by senior officers, and after five months he returned to France. Life there bored him, and he travelled: first to Cameroon, for three years, then to Venezuela for two. He returned to rejoin French special forces in time for Suez. Parachuted into Sinai, the fighting ended before he became involved.

His awards included Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Croix de Guerre, Médaille de la Résistance and the DCM. His memoirs were entitled La Liberté, c’est mon plaisir (2002).

From 1966 he served for three decades as mayor of Ouzouer-sur-Trézée in north-central France. In February 1997 he returned to Bordeaux for the trial of Maurice Papon, the former Vichy official accused of deporting 1,600 Jews from the city. In his defence, Papon claimed that he had been a Resistance go-between in 1944, a claim which La Rochefoucauld backed. “He [Papon] was one of those brave men who risked their lives to help the Resistance and the Allies,” he said.

Despite this, Papon was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years. Freed while his lawyers appealed, Papon fled to Switzerland, where he was found under an assumed name: Robert de La Rochefoucauld. The former special forces soldier had provided Papon with his passport. When detectives arrived to question La Rochefoucauld, his wife told them: “Don’t try to lock him up. He escapes, you know.”

Robert de La Rochefoucauld married Bernadette (née de Marcieu de Gontaut-Biron). She survives him, with three daughters. Their son Jean inherits the title.

Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, born September 16 1923, died May 8 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... cauld.html

 

[Kondoru]

What a guy.

you couldnt make a film like that. It would be too OTT

 

[Spookdaddy]

I've recently read, The Resistance - The French Fight Against the Nazis - by Matthew Cobb.

Highly recommended.

One of the things you notice, and Cobb makes clear, is that many of the most important and influential members of the Resistance - and often those whose activities required the coolest and most sustained form of bravery - were not the people running around with explosives and sten guns (who were actually relatively rare) but the organisers and administrators. He doesn't at all detract from the men of women of action, but he does suggest that the constant and almost intolerable levels of stress involved in the day to day organisation of the Resistance are often forgotten when we conjure up the more traditional images.

My opinion of de Gaulle remains unchanged though: I've really tried to understand his point of view (in the same way that, for instance, really trying to understand de Valera's point of view made me much more sympathetic to his actions) - but nothing seems to shake me out of the opinion that he was an arrogant, selfish, snobbish, ungrateful, arsehole.

There was an amazing parade of maquisards wearing tattered clothes. Real sans-culottes! Most of them had their collars open. It was very hot. And they had flowers in the barrels of their rifles. They were pulling a German armoured car on which were perched some women in skimpy dresses. They were shouting and waving flags. De Gaulle took all this very badly. He just sat there muttering 'What a farce!'

What an arse, more like.

De Gaulle deliberately poured scorn on the Resistance - an attitude which obviously caused dismay to those who had fought and lost friends and family - however, he was greeted with wild enthusiasm by a non-combatant general public who had generally distinguished themselves by keeping their heads down for the last few years. It all leaves a distinctly bad taste in the mouth.

Edit: The quote is from the famous Resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac and concerns a victory parade of FFI fighters in Marseilles. It's in Cobb's book.

 

[Spookdaddy]

On a slight tangent:

Often its the way with books that you wonder about the book you aren't reading.

While reading Cobb's book I was struck by the activities of RAF 161 Special Duties Squadron, and the Lysander pilots who flew in and out of France in support of the Resistance - and how incredibly atmospheric it must have been to fly at night (slowly and unarmed, 'with only a voice back bearing over the Channel, a map, a compass, a clock and blind flying instruments') over a blacked out planet and into occupied territory. And also how incredibly atmospheric it must have been to wait in a pitch black field listening for the drone of its engine.

That night I had one of the most incredibly vivid dream I've ever had - which involved sitting in a metal box somewhere over southern France looking for tiny Morse flashes somewhere down below me. Although I did wake up in a sweat with a bit of a thump in the chest, it wasn't a nightmare - more like one of those Full HD dreams that makes you wonder for a split second whether you actually are at home in bed.

I blame too much cheese, a very vivid imagination and the fact that the week before I'd been on a flight to Barcelona on an incredibly clear day via a route over France which can't have been far off the ones flown by the Lysander pilots.

 

[ramonmercado]

Australia WWII agent Nancy Wake's ashes scattered
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21735824

At one point, Nancy Wake was top of the Gestapo's most wanted list

The ashes of Australia's most decorated World War II servicewoman, former saboteur and spy Nancy Wake, have been scattered at a ceremony in France.

The service took place in a forest near the village of Verneix, whose mayor attended the ceremony, as did an Australian military representative.

Mrs Wake died in 2011 at the age of 98.

It had been her wish that her ashes be scattered in the area, where she played a key role in the resistance movement against German occupation.

Australia was represented at the ceremony by military attache Brig Bill Sowry.

"We are here today to pass on our respects, to give her the respect she deserves," Brig Sowry said.

"It's great the people of Verneix have done so much to recognise her and make this little part of France part of Australia as well."

The service was far from sombre, the BBC's Chris Bockman reports.

Mrs Wake was partial to an early morning gin-and-tonic and after her ashes were scattered, there was - as she had apparently asked for - a drinks reception at the local mayor's office, he says.

'White Mouse'
Mrs Wake was one of the most highly decorated Allied secret agents of World War II.

Born in New Zealand but raised in Australia, she is credited with helping hundreds of Allied personnel escape from occupied France.

The German Gestapo named her the "White Mouse" because she was so elusive.


The ceremony took place in the grounds of a chateau in central France
After studying journalism in London, Mrs Wake became a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in Paris and reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany.

After visiting Vienna in 1933, she vowed to fight against the persecution of Jews.

After the fall of France in 1940, Mrs Wake became a French Resistance courier and later a saboteur and spy - setting up escape routes and sabotaging German installations, saving hundreds of Allied lives.

She worked for British Special Operations and was parachuted into France in April 1944 before D-Day to deliver weapons to French Resistance fighters.

At one point, she was top of the Gestapo's most wanted list.

"Freedom is the only thing worth living for. While I was doing that work, I used to think it didn't matter if I died, because without freedom there was no point in living," she once said of her wartime exploits.

It was only after the liberation of France that she learned her husband, French businessman Henri Fiocca, had been tortured and killed by the Gestapo for refusing to give her up.

She returned to Australia in 1949, where she failed several times to win a seat in parliament.

In 1957 she went back to England, where she married RAF fighter pilot John Forward.

Her story inspired Sebastian Faulks' 1999 novel Charlotte Gray. A film based on the book, with the lead role played by Australian actress Cate Blanchett, was released in 2001.

 

[ramonmercado]

Dan Snow follows in the rather wet footsteps of John Wesley Powell who led the first non Amerindian expedition to navigate the Grand Canyon.

Watch episode one of Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Sunday 5 January, or catch it later on iPlayer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m5p7b

John Wesley Powell: The one-armed explorer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25491932

John Wesley Powell began exploring the American West as a young man

While much of the US was being rapidly settled in the 19th Century, large parts of the West remained unknown. Determined to change that, one man led an expedition along the "impassable" Colorado River and into the unexplored Grand Canyon, writes historian Dan Snow, who followed in his footsteps for the BBC.

In May 1869, 10 men in four boats - loaded to the gunnels with food and scientific equipment - set off from Green River in the American territory of Wyoming.

The current bore them swiftly southwards.

It was the start of one of the greatest journeys of exploration in American history, one that owed everything to the energy, ambition and towering curiosity of US Civil War veteran John Wesley Powell.

His aim was to fill in the vast blank space, the area of a medium-sized European country, which still dominated the map of the American West.

Running through this unknown territory was the world's mightiest canyon - a jagged, deep, yet breathtakingly beautiful scar carved by the Colorado River, known simply as the Grand Canyon.

No man had ever boated the length of the Colorado, its massive cataracts were simply considered impassable.

As the rest of the US was rapidly being settled, this area remained a mystery.

The team succeeded in its mission, but at a terrible cost.

Three months, and 1,000 miles (1,600km) later, only two boats carrying six emaciated survivors made it to a settlement at the mouth of the Virgin River in Nevada.

Green River
Terrible hardship and privation had forced four men to abandon the expedition and driven the rest to the brink of insanity.

This summer I set off in boats exactly like Powell's, to recreate a sizeable portion of that journey.

We could never experience the full horror of what Powell's men went through. For a start, we knew where we were going.

Powell and his men constantly stared at the horizon, straining for any signs that a mighty waterfall was about to cast them to their deaths. Spared that threat, we had it easy.


Dan Snow looks into John Wesley Powell's 1869 expedition
Powell was a true child of the 19th Century.

He threw off the influence of his father, who was a poor itinerant preacher, an immigrant from Shrewsbury in England.

Immersing himself in books, science was his creed. The voracious thirst for knowledge and advancement marked him out from childhood.

Powell was in a hurry. He rowed down the Ohio, Illinois and Mississippi rivers before the age of 25.

Powell party on the Green River, Wyoming, 1871
The party set off from Green River in Wyoming - a route that Powell retraced with another party in 1871
But his exploring was brutally cut short by the Civil War. Fighting for the Unionists, he witnessed the horrors of the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, where the wounded were burned to death as fires tore through the long grass that covered the battlefield.

At Shiloh he was shot by a rifle bullet, lost an arm and almost died. Nerve damage would cause him great pain for the rest of his life.

Powell launched his expedition after becoming obsessed with the West during rock and fossil collecting trips during previous summers.

He was joined by a colourful collection of characters, from those with no experience to hardened mountain men, and called himself The Major.

In his journal and a later account of the journey, he never once made reference to his disability and it never stopped him scaling the canyon edges to collect specimens.


Dan Snow and crew members have a dramatic moment riding the rapids
Some days the river was benign and progress easy. Other days the Colorado turned wild.

While rowing on the stretches of flat water is exhausting, nothing compares to the stomach churning terror and physical exertion of being sucked into white water.

Powell's expedition encountered about 500 significant rapids. Any one of these could have wrecked boats and killed crew.

Some rapids he risked. The boats would, he said, "go leaping and bounding over these like things of life".

Other rapids were death traps, "the rushing waters break into great waves on the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad, white foam".

One of his men described an approaching rapid as "a perfect hell of waves".

Powell camp, 1871 expedition
The men who joined Powell on his expeditions had rudimentary equipment
It would have been madness to run these rapids, so they would pull into shore, unpack all their supplies and portage everything along the precarious river bank.

During my own trip, nine of us struggled to lift one boat. A portage of 400m took us the entire day, leaving the boat bumped and scraped, and our legs and ankles battered.

Continue reading the main story
Find out more

Colorado River
Watch episode one of Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Sunday 5 January, or catch it later on iPlayer

Operation Grand Canyon with Dan Snow
In white water, the boats rapidly became waterlogged and filled up. They span around, impossible to control.

Powell wrote that if the boat is "turned from its course so as to strike the wave broadside on, and the wave breaks... the boat is capsized; then we must cling to her for the watertight compartments act as buoys and she cannot sink; and so we go on, dragged through the waves".

Once flat water was reached the exhausted men would scramble aboard and starting bailing.

Powell's expedition lost two of its boats - one carrying a third of the remaining food and supplies. They were always collecting tree sap to help patch the remaining boats.

By late August they were in a terrible condition.

In a diary kept during the trip, soldier George Bradley wrote that it was, "a ceaseless grind... which taxed our strength to the limit".

Three months before, on the very first day of the expedition, they had blithely thrown 500lbs (225kg) of bacon away to lighten the load.

Now they were subsisting on musty flour alone.

Bradley recorded that the thin rations had "reduced me to poor condition".

On 28 August, discontent turned to outright mutiny. Three men hiked out of the canyon, preferring the uncertain dangers of the desert to what they felt was certain death if they stayed.

Powell begged them to stay. "Some tears are shed," he wrote, "It is rather a solemn parting, each party thinks the other is taking the dangerous course."

Powell talks to a man in Native American dress, in 1873
Powell continued to explore the American West in later years
Tragically, these three men were never seen again. How they died remains a mystery.

The very next day, the two remaining boats with their starving crews finally emerged from the canyon.

Their reappearance after months of silence thrilled a nation that had been waiting for news.

Powell made the most of his new celebrity. He would become director of the US Geological Survey, the Bureau of Ethnology and the Smithsonian Institution.

His experience in the canyon had taught him that, rather than being empty, the canyon was home to many Native American cultures. It was the start of an enduring fascination and he went on to lead further expeditions.

He had entered the Grand Canyon as a pioneer, hoping that it could be exploited and settled, but the experience changed him.

He realised that the presence of indigenous peoples, the landscape, water and ecosystems meant that it could not and should not be settled as the Eastern states had been.

Now, as the Western states are threatened with a catastrophic water shortage, it is possible that he should be remembered not just as an explorer, but also as a prophet.

Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

 

[rynner2]

Something that's new to me, although it happened in 1973:

In pictures: The longest ever raft journey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-25635632

But this Las Balsas adventure somehow passed me by, because in 73 my own sailing career was just getting started, and days afloat were generally days free from news. More info here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Balsas

Everyone's heard of Thor Heyerdahl and the Kontiki expedition, 1947.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki

But I once owned a book about a man who built a similar raft some years later, and sailed it single-handed across the Pacific. By the magic of the internet, I conjure up his name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Willis_(sailor)

His first voyage was in 1954; "In a second great voyage ten years later, he rafted 11,000 miles from South America to Australia" (which is further than the 9,000 miles claimed by Las Balsas..??)

EDIT: His first raft, was called Seven Little Sisters, as it was made from seven balsa logs. Coincidentally I have the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs in sight on MarineTraffic as I monitor the Rickmers Dubai off Newhaven...


So there you go, three voyages for the price of one! Plenty of derring-do there to tempt the dreamer into becoming a man of action! (Although what Health and Safety might say about such enterprises nowadays can be imagined...)