The Worst Journey In The World [Paperback]

So begins Apsley Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World", a book haunted by the possibility that the author's decision to turn his dogs for home on 10th March 1912 may have cost Captain Scott and his two remaining companions their lives. Cherry-Garrard, the second youngest man to sail South in the Terra Nova, initially seemed to be the least suited to the hardships of Edwardian-era polar travel. A quiet, unassuming, chronically shortsighted member of the aristocracy he was initially plagued by self-doubt to almost the same degree as his expedition leader. All the more joyful then to find, in this excellent travel book, the emergence of one of the unsung heroes of the expedition. A gifted, gracious writer Cherry matter-of-factly chronicles the horrors experienced by the party over two long years in the South. The first half of the book records what amounts to Cherry's triumph (though is far too self-critical to acknowledge it as such). His growing confidence and adeptness on the boat journey down to the Antarctic, leading to his selection for the 3-man Winter Expedition to Cape Crozier to collect King Emperor penguin eggs. This 150 mile round trip - the 'Worst Journey' of the title - was undertaken in breath-takingly harsh conditions six months before the attempt on the Pole. Along with Edward Wilson and Henry 'Birdy' Bowers Cherry hauled 790 lbs of stores and equipment across treacherous, uncharted terrain in permanent darkness. The temperature reached minus 76C.

The Winter Journey can be seen as the saving grace for the entire fated trip - carried out at huge personal cost for nothing but the furtherment of scientific knowledge. The text is plain but wholly affecting. "I don't know why our tongues never got frozen but all my teeth, the nerves of which had been killed, split to pieces." Cherry came through this experience but it had shattered more than his teeth. Phyiscally drained to an extent from which he never really recovered, he was not subsequently selected for the final leg of the Polar assault - a bitter blow to even this humble man. Instead, and maybe worse, he returned to base, waited and, when the Pole party failed to reappear, was ordered out with dogs to find them. He got as far as the infamous One tonne depot - the food & fuel cache which Scott just failed to reach - before blizzards and rations forced him back again. His leader Scott and his best friends Wilson and Bowers were less than two miles distant. The realisation of this fact, uncovered along with the bodies the following spring, broke Cherry completely.

He returned home, fought in the First World War, and afterwards slowly set about both dismantling his country estate and honouring his lost comrades by writing the clearest, closest, most moving account of the tragedy I have read. More than just a dry account for Polar enthusiasts 'Worst Journey..' is a must for anyone who has complained that they were too cold, too tired, too overworked or too undervalued as a human being. Awe-inspiring in content, beautifully written and a real treasure on almost every level "Worst Journey" fully reveals the highs and lows of this famous episode with a magnifcent gentility that many of the men who went South found in the vast empty landscape. True, there are no photographs in my edition (an enormous oversight by the publisher surely) but don't let this put you off. There are plenty of Cherry's prematurely aged face in other Scott books but none have the quiet authority of the words that this man found for this doomed adventure story.