Twelfth Man on Everest
By STRIX TN the Spectator of April 17, 1953, the clair- voyant Strix wrote : 'If Everest is climbed this year the sumtnit is likely to be reached some time towards the end of May or at the beginning of June. It is, I understand, just possible that, if the feat were accomplished on the earliest possible date, the news of it would reach Printing House Square on the eve of Coronation Day.'
This, as it turned out, was what happened; and in Coronation Everest, published by Faber at 16s., Mr. James Morris tells the story of how the first news of the climbers' triumph, which occurred on May 29, reached The Times (but no other ,news- paper) on the evening of June 1. He has written a very funny, very exciting book.
By 1953 the news-value of an attempt on Everest had become inflated. There were a num- ber of reasons for this. Mr. Morris deals acridly with the imponderable forces of ballyhoo but does not mention what must surely have been an important factor—namely the relative ease with which would-be poachers and scavengers on The Times' preserves could dog the expedition through Nepal or hang about the cable offices in Katmandu through which all despatches from the mountain had to pass on their way to London. A main reason Why there was no scramble for news from the earliest Everest expeditions was the total lack of facilities for scrambling. Here the contrast between Everest in 1953 and (say) 1922 is basically the same as the contrast be- tween the South Pole in 1957 and 1912.
For Mr. Morris the mechanics of transmitting his news, complex enough in themselves, were bedevilled by the need to ensure its security in the event of interception. The message which ap- peared in The Times on the rain-swept morning of June 2, 1953, read : 'The summit of Everest was reached on May 29 by Hillary and Tenzing.' What Mr. Morris, exhausted by a swift, dan- gerous and partly nocturnal descent of the mountain, actually wrote was : 'Snow conditions bad stop advance base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement.'
The use of a code was not a finicky, super- subtle precaution, dreamed up for the hell of it against some remote contingency. Mr. Morris had two methods of getting his messages back from the mountain. The usual one was by runner from Base Camp to a wireless transmitter in the British Embassy in Katmandu; this journey normally took eight days, but the runners earned more if they did it in less, and twice completed it in live— an average of thirty-five miles a day with three mountain ranges to cross.
But Sherpas, though loyal, are not incor- ruptible. Our author was haunted, reasonably enough, by the fear that one or more of them would be bribed or otherwise seduced by his journalistic competitors, and that news intended for The Times would appear first elsewhere. This possibility had been foreseen before he left England, and he had been provided with a cipher comprising, as well as code-equivalents for all the members of the expedition, formulae which converted '3,000 feet' into 'Waistcoat Crossword Amsterdam' and 'summit' into 'Golliwog.'
But when he reached Namche Bazaar, near the foot of the mountain, Mr. Morris found an Indian police post which communicated twice daily by wireless with the Indian Embassy in Katmandu. This would cut out the week-long time-lag imposed by the use of runners. But the demeanour of the police officers, though cour- teous, was wary; and Mr. Morris knew that he could not expect them to transmit messages which, being encoded into gibberish, they could not understand.
It was the final outcome rather than the pro- gress of the expedition in which the world and his competitors were vitally interested; and Mr. Morris felt that the risks involved in transmitting this, to Katmandu in clear (i.e. in plain language) were unacceptable. So the sensible fellow evolved a second cipher, in which messages instead of being Jabberwockian mumbo jumbo seemed to make sense. He sent back a copy of this cipher to the colleague from Printing House Square who was acting as his rear link in Katmandu, and was thus able, when the great moment came, to use the police wireless set at Namche Bazaar and get his news to London on the eve of the Coro- nation. 'It helped us to sleep that night,' Prince Philip is reported to have said, '—what little sleep we got!'
In a bald summary these shifts and expedients may sound capable of arousing only a languid interest outside journalistic circles. But it is the great virtue of Mr. Morris's book that he makes us share his anxieties, see his point, and follow with a Watsonian loyalty this reconstruction of a problem, this staff-ride over a battlefield of wits. (His message from Namche Bazaar did leak' in Katmandu, but 'those who saw its wording• assumed it to be the herald of failure and re- ported accordingly.') Between the scenes in which Our Special Correspondent plays the leading part (assuming for the purpose a clueless, well-intentioned air which recalls the hero of Mr. Waugh's Scoop) are sandwiched rich slices of observation. The real heroes, the climbers, are presented in a series of casual but revealing sketches,, and there is a splendid chapter on the Sherpas, Noble Savages at one moment and Nervo and Knox the next.
But what is especially good about this book is its sense of perspective. Mr. Morris has a gently mocking manner. He was with but not of Sir John Hunt's expedition. Though he climbed gamely up to Camp IV he was a stranger to the skills—and the jargon—of mountaineering. Yet on all he saw and all he underwent he places. With a light but unerring touch, a true value. This passage from the last page of his book is typical : 'The gossip faded and the squabbles subsided. Everest became more than a national pride, or the possession of a privileged few. It took its place (if one may be a little sententious) among the triumphs of the human spirit, shared by all. For a year or two money was made from it, political hobby-horses were ridden, heroes were erected; publishers competed for its tales, and the cinema advertised the exploit with high-falutin commentaries. A cheap and shoddy tarnish settled upon the adventure, like a rusting sea-mist upon silver.
'But the thing grew with the years, and out- distanced its detractors, and became part of all our heritage, Easterners and Westerners, Com-, munists and Capitalists, quiet men and adven- turers.• Which newspaper procured that trium- phant message from the mountain? Nobody remembers, and all the others soon filched it any- way. Who stepped on the summit first? I have forgotten (and never asked). . . . Who cares?'
To anybody who feels inclined to re-examine a great exploit through the sharp but tolerant eyes of a detached participant Mr. Morris's book is strongly to be recommended.
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