For King and Country

I wrote in a recent blog about the early settlers in Australia and the hardships they endured. I suggested that in this age of deriving experience through our computers and smart phone communication that the tales woven by Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson should be on the prescribed reading list of every youngster growing up in Australia. These people who strove to open up the interior give a stark contrast to the values and objectives that people had then, as a contrast to the relative ease with which we live our life these days.
In England my generation grew up and were encouraged to read about the story of Scotts expedition to the South Pole. It is an epic in endurance, determination and strength of character.Their equipment was very basic. Their boots nothing more then tough mountain boots, their clothing simply extra layers of normal outdoor clothing, the tent a canvas bell tent nothing more complicated and more in tune with a winters weekend away in Scotland. Not the specialist equipment which we see today with compartmental layers designed to insulate and, available to anyone at the local sports shop.  

The five men who made the dash to the Pole (Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Evans and Oates) are etched in my generations memory for their stoicism and courage. Oates remembered especially for his courageous decision, suffering from frostbitten feet and knowing he was slowing the rest of the team down as they struggled back from the Pole. His famous statement to the others in the tent as the wind and the snow was producing mayhem, "I think I will go outside, I maybe a while" was received and understood by those in the tent as a suicide message as he opened the tent flap and walked off into the white-out. The remaining men struggled on to find their stores diminished eventually to nothing and still 11 miles to go. And so they died, leaving behind messages and diaries full of stiff upper lip expressions of fondness for those they were leaving behind. Theirs was a time when doing the right thing, rode above all else and the sacrifice of their own lives simply a price to pay for doing something they thought important for King and Country.