The face of true courage
SAS soldier Henry Worsley’s lifelong ambition was to cross the Antarctic alone, in his hero Ernest Shackleton’s footsteps. He gave it his all — and died in the attempt...
THe atrocious storm came out of nowhere. ‘ the temperature was - 22 degrees, and frigid winds whipped up ice that stung the eyes like bits of glass.’
Henry Worsley immediately decided that his team needed to set up their tent to escape the storm. But ‘moments after they unpacked the tent, the wind nearly hurled it into the white oblivion’.
Had that happened, it would have been lost for ever, and without that thin layer of nylon fabric sheltering them from the storm’s fury, they would surely have died.
once they had grappled the tent to the ground, fastened it down with ice screws and huddled inside, the wind intensified to 50 miles per hour. ‘it was,’ said Worsley, ‘as if the elements were furious that we were there.’
this was on an expedition in 2008 — and so lt Col Henry Worsley, whose final fatal trip in 2015 is recounted in this gripping book, knew all about the antarctic, and it didn’t diminish his enthusiasm for it one bit: a 10,000ft peak called Mount terror; a live volcano, spewing black, acrid smoke into an icy sky; temperatures that can drop to almost -90c; a chain of frozen mountains whose only passes are glaciers riddled with dreadful crevasses, large enough to swallow a man whole . . .
the terrible beauty of the frozen continent has lured explorers back again and again, and one such explorer was Henry Worsley.
He HaD served with the SaS and, like any Special Forces soldier, he knew that what counts is strength of mind and will, not sheer fitness.
He was also man enough to feel no embarrassment at his love of needlework: one delightful fact that emerges from David Grann’s short but superbly written book is that Worsley taught lace- making to prisoners.
‘He was also a sculptor, a fierce boxer, a collector of rare books and maps and fossils . . .’
But his greatest ambition was to follow in the footsteps of ernest Shackleton across antarctica while raising money for wounded soldiers.
a distant relative of Frank Worsley, who had been captain of Shackleton’s ship endeavour, he aimed to cross the entire continent, aged 55, solo and unaided, in just ten brief weeks or so. it was, said another explorer, an ‘ almost inhuman challenge’.
He arrived on october 30, 2015, at Punta arenas in southern Chile, for a flight to antarctica, but the weather was ominous: a terrible storm blew up, despite it being the antarctic ‘summer’, and when he finally set off he was two weeks delayed.
the clock was ticking, and he would need to be out of antarctica before the winter set in once again in February.
the first day he trekked for eight hours, pulling a 330lb sled, and in the evening rang home via satellite phone, tired but full of enthusiasm. His next obstacle was the transantarctic Mountains, one of the longest but least- known mountain ranges on earth.
to traverse them, he had to don crampons and climb an immense icy slope several hundred feet high, pulling his sled laden with food, fuel and equipment. He found he simply couldn’t do it, so had to carry items up one by one.
later he almost fell down a crevasse, disguised under a thin surface of snow, and only just managed to haul himself out.
‘ When he peered into the chasm, he “suddenly felt very alone, vulnerable and scared”.’ it reminded him, he said philosophically, ‘just who is in control around here. trespassers will be punished’.
He was now burning 6,000- 8,000 calories a day, and as it is nearly impossible to take this much in, he was losing weight fast. During the day he subsisted on protein bars, but biting into one that was frozen solid, he broke off a front tooth.
He shrugged and pushed on — often fantasising about the fattiest, stodgiest food he could think of: ‘Fish pie, double cream, steak and chips, more chips, rice pudding, Dairy Milk and pizza . . .’
He found he had to stop every minute to get his breath. there was endless bad weather, the dreaded ‘white darkness’ of a dense, icy murk, where he could see no further than the end of his own skis, and there was a soul-destroying loneliness.
He began to confess to his private diary: ‘i just can’t go on . . . despairing,’ then gritted his teeth in toughest plucky-Brit fashion, and pushed on. on
christmas Day he unwrapped a mince pie and christmas cake his family had given him, and soon afterwards passed by the South Pole.
he received constant messages of love and support from his family, his teenage daughter, Alicia, messaging him: ‘i am thinking of you constantly, and love you more than ever.’
he said these were like ‘a warm hand in the small of my back, lifting me when i am down’.
YET however strong his will and mind, his body was breaking down. he was well over halfway through his epic journey, but he had lost 40lb and his legs were ‘stick-thin’.
For the first time, his calls home sounded not just exhausted but ‘sad’, his wife, Joanna, noted with increasing anxiety. in his diary, he wrote in fragments. ‘ So breathless . . . i am fading . . .’ And another: ‘Very desperate . . . slipping away . . . stomach . . .’
he had walked nearly 800 nautical miles in 70 days, and had just 30 tantalising miles to go — but he could no longer move. indeed, lying in his tent on day 70, he no longer had the energy to boil water.
his son, max, told him he would always see him as a true polar warrior, but ‘ you just need to pull out and come home’.
At last he made the call for ‘ the most expensive taxi ride in the world’, and was airlifted back to Punta Arenas. instead of glory, said his wife happily, ‘he chose us’.
Alas, the cruellest continent had a final sting. The stomach ache that had troubled him for weeks turned out to be bacterial peritonitis, a dangerous infection that required immediate surgery. his adventure had taken a terrible toll on his entire body, including his immune system.
Joanna flew immediately to Santiago, capital of chile, where she received another message saying his liver had failed. Waiting anxiously for the connecting plane down to Punta Arenas, she then heard that his kidneys had failed. Finally, the british Ambassador to chile, Fiona clouder, came in person. holding Joanna’s hand, she told her that henry had died.
‘ She was facing her own Antarctica,’ says Grann heartrendingly. So were her children.
it’s dreadfully sad — Worsley so nearly made it — but sadness is far from the whole story. Worsley had immense courage, a lovable, almost boyish sense of adventure, and his family felt huge pride in him, as did the british nation. ‘if i’m even half the man Dad turned out be,’ said max, ‘i’d be so pleased.’
henry Worsley was posthumously awarded the Polar medal, whose previous recipients include both robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Two years after henry’s death, Joanna, max and Alicia returned to South Georgia, where Shackleton is interred. And in light snowfall, they buried a small wooden box containing henry Worsley’s ashes.