Angels and Fools

Today, the Terra Nova Expedition is mainly remembered for Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated foray to the South Pole. Yet the expedition was not a single-purpose venture but comprised an extensive scientific programme along with several journeys. – The most trying and hazardous of those was the Winter Journey: three men covering about 200 kilometres in darkness, storm, and temperatures below -50°C. What would be considered anything but a walk in the park even today – with better clothing and food, and better means of navigation and transportation – bordered the insane back then in 1911.

It is extraordinary how often angels and fools do the same thing in this life, and I have never been able to settle which we were on this journey.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard was the only of the three men to return home but he paid a price for the bodily and mental exertions in the Antarctic. Apart from physical implications he suffered from depression (probably PTSD). – His two companions during those five horrific weeks, Edward »Bill« Wilson as well as Henry »Birdie« Bowers, were to die together with Scott on their way back from the South Pole half a year later.

The objective of the Winter Journey, by the way, was to try and collect some eggs of the Emperor penguins breeding at Cape Crozier. Scientists of the day assumed that penguins as »very primitive birds« might furnish an evolutionary link between reptiles and birds and that embryos would help clarify this …