There's a rather long introduction that briefly summarizes the history of Antarctica and what the offshoot parties got up to. The "Inexpressible Island" party survives a winter in excruciating conditions.

George Levick:

The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but it seemed probable that hell itself would be paved something after the style of Inexpressible Island.

Hymns are important:

But there were con­sol­a­tions; the long-waited-for lump of sug­ar: the sing­songs—and about these there hangs a story. When Camp­bell’s Party and the re­mains of the Main Party for­gathered at Cape Evans in Novem­ber 1912, Camp­bell would give out the hymns for Church. The first Sunday we had “Praise the Lord, ye heav­ens ad­ore Him,” and the second, and the third. We sug­ges­ted a change, to which Camp­bell asked, “Why?” We said it got a bit mono­ton­ous. “Oh no,” said Camp­bell, “we al­ways sang it on In­ex­press­ible Is­land.” It was also about the only one he knew.

Henry Robertson ("Birdie") Bowers is the youngster of the crew, in tremendous shape, great at organizing supplies/logistics. Writing letters home to his mom (the brackets are Cherry-Garrard's annotations):

Talk­ing about spiders [Bowers al­ways had the greatest hor­ror of spiders]—I have to col­lect them as well as in­sects. Needless to say I caught them with a butterfly net, and never touched one...

I ran down after the fol­low­ing wave, and se­cur­ing my green hat, which by the by is a most use­ful as­set, struck out through the boil­ing, and grabbed the pram safely as we were lif­ted on the crest of an im­mense roller...

I am still com­fort­able in cot­ton shirts and whites, while some are wear­ing Sh­et­land gear. Nearly every­body is provided with Sh­et­land things. I am glad you have marked mine, as they are all so much alike...

"dear mom, thank you for putting my name on my clothes so I can tell it apart from the other boys'" what a vibe.

Brb volunteering for Antarctic service as the church organist:

On one fam­ous oc­ca­sion we tried to play the pi­an­ola to ac­com­pany the hymns, but, since the rolls were scored rather for mu­sic­al ef­fect than for church ser­vices, the pi­an­ola was sud­denly found to be play­ing some­thing quite dif­fer­ent from what was be­ing sung. All through the ex­ped­i­tion the want of someone who could play the pi­ano was felt, and such a man is cer­tainly a great as­set in a life so far re­moved from all the pleas­ures of civil­iz­a­tion.

Guys, did nobody tell you what happens when you kill an albatross?

An­oth­er day a little later we caught a wan­der­ing al­batross, a black-browed al­batross, and a sooty al­batross all to­geth­er, and set them on the deck tethered to the vent­il­at­ors while their pho­to­graphs were taken. They were such beau­ti­ful birds that we were loath to kill them, but their value as sci­entif­ic spe­ci­mens out­weighed the wish to set them free, and we gave them eth­er so that they did not suf­fer.

I'm actually doing one of those e-mail update readalongs with the Divine Comedy so I understand this reference now better than I did when I flagged it at the time for "wow, Cherry-Garrard being highbrow again."

The seas through which we had to pass to reach the pack-ice must be the most stormy in the world. Dante tells us that those who have com­mit­ted car­nal sin are tossed about cease­lessly by the most furi­ous winds in the second circle of Hell. The cor­res­pond­ing hell on earth is found in the south­ern oceans, which en­circle the world without break, tem­pest-tossed by the gales which fol­low one an­oth­er round and round the world from West to East.

Cherry-Garrard on Bowers:

His tend­ency was al­ways to un­der­es­tim­ate dif­fi­culties, wheth­er the force of wind in a bliz­zard, or the troubles of a po­lar trav­el­ler.

Bowers on a storm at sea:

We sang and re-sang every silly song we ever knew...the whole scene was one of pathos really...Cap­tain Scott was simply splen­did, he might have been at Cowes, and to do him and Teddy Evans cred­it, at our worst strait none of our lands­men who were work­ing so hard knew how ser­i­ous things were. Capt. Scott said to me quietly—‘I am afraid it’s a bad busi­ness for us—What do you think?’

Raymond Priestley on the same event:

If Dante had seen our ship as she was at her worst, I fancy he would have got a good idea for an­oth­er Circle of Hell, though he would have been at a loss to ac­count for such a cheer­ful and rib­ald lot of Souls.

Is this a double entendre?

Hardly had we reached the thick pack, which pre­vailed after the sub­urbs had been passed, when we saw the little Adélie pen­guins hur­ry­ing to meet us. Great Scott, they seemed to say, what’s this, and soon we could hear the cry which we shall nev­er for­get. “Aark, aark,” they said, and full of won­der and curi­os­ity, and per­haps a little out of breath, they stopped every now and then to ex­press their feel­ings…

Okay you know the poem about "great fleas have little fleas"? Griffith Taylor wrote a parody about ice floes.

Penguins:

Whatever a pen­guin does has in­di­vidu­al­ity, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He can­not fly away. And be­cause he is quaint in all that he does, but still more be­cause he is fight­ing against big­ger odds than any oth­er bird, and fight­ing al­ways with the most gal­lant pluck, he comes to be con­sidered as some­thing apart from the or­din­ary bird—some­times sol­emn, some­times hu­mor­ous, en­ter­pris­ing, chiv­al­rous, cheeky—and al­ways (un­less you are driv­ing a dog-team) a wel­come and, in some ways, an al­most hu­man friend.

Priestley on his encounter with Amundsen's crew:

Well! we have left the Nor­we­gi­ans and our thoughts are full, too full, of them at present. The im­pres­sion they have left with me is that of a set of men of dis­tinct­ive per­son­al­ity, hard, and evid­ently in­ured to hard­ship, good go­ers and pleas­ant and good-hu­moured. All these qual­it­ies com­bine to make them very dan­ger­ous rivals, but even did one want not to, one can­not help lik­ing them in­di­vidu­ally in spite of the rivalry...They kept fresh pota­toes from Nor­way to the Bar­ri­er. (Some of them must surely be reneg­ade Ir­ish­men.)

Bowers, Cherry-Garrard, Crean, and some horses get stuck on an ice patch away from camp. They somehow come through, Bowers writes home. (Brackets are Cherry-Garrard.) Magnificent desolation!

It was not a pleas­ant day that Cherry and I spent all alone there, know­ing as we did that it only wanted a zephyr from the south to send us ir­re­triev­ably out to sea; still there is sat­is­fac­tion in know­ing that one has done one’s ut­most, and I felt that hav­ing been de­livered so won­der­fully so far, the same Hand would not for­sake us at the last...Scott, in­stead of blow­ing me up, was too re­lieved at our safety to be any­thing but pleased. I said: ‘What about the ponies and the sledges?’ He said: ‘I don’t care a damn about the ponies and sledges. It’s you I want, and I am go­ing to see you safe here up on the Bar­ri­er be­fore I do any­thing else.’... Scott was for killing them [it should be re­membered that this ice, with the men on it, might drift away from the Bar­ri­er at any mo­ment, and then there might be no fur­ther chance of sav­ing the men] but I was not, and, pre­tend­ing not to hear him, I rushed the old beast again...It is a mag­ni­fi­cent view from the heights and for wild des­ol­ate grandeur would take some beat­ing... In con­clud­ing my re­port to Cap­tain Scott on the ‘floe’ in­cid­ent, which he asked me to set down long af­ter­wards, I said, ‘In re­con­sid­er­ing the fore­go­ing I have come to the con­clu­sion that I un­der­es­tim­ated the danger signs on the sea-ice on Feb­ru­ary 28, and on the fol­low­ing day might have at­tached more im­port­ance to the safety of my com­pan­ions.'

When you don't realize asbestos is toxic but that's fine because it's not even in the top ten things that can kill you:

Some­how some­body made ce­ment, and built the bricks to­geth­er, and one of the mag­net­ic huts gave up its as­bes­tos sheet­ing to in­su­late the chim­ney from the wood­work of the roofs.

Bowers misses his pals...but fortunately he has his balaclava. (This fandom borders on "stereotypical Russian novel" levels of naming conventions. Edward Adrian Wilson is "Bill." Lawrence Oates is "Titus" for absurd British history reasons. Bowers himself is "Birdie" because...I don't know why? I am a little embarrassed by how quickly I just rolled with it, but only a little, because it's me.)

I ex­pect the truth of the mat­ter was that all my spe­cial pals, Bill, Cherry, Tit­us, and Atch, had been left be­hind...I only had a thin balaclava and my ears were nearly nipped.

Bowers turns sledging into a competition, foreshadowing? :/

Of course we need not have raced, but we did, and I would do the same thing every time.

More fun with balaclavas:

It was Wilson’s pleas­ant con­ceit to keep his balaclava rolled up, so that his face was bare, on such oc­ca­sions, be­ing some­what proud of the fact that he had not, as yet, been frost­bit­ten. Ima­gine our joy when he entered the hut one cold windy even­ing with two white spots on his cheeks which he vainly tried to hide be­hind his dog­skin mitts.

The Tennyson aesthetic is a little too on-point:

Most of us man­aged to find room in our per­son­al gear when sledging for some book which did not weigh much and yet would last. Scott took some Brown­ing on the Po­lar Jour­ney, though I only saw him read­ing it once; Wilson took Maud and In Me­mori­am…

Two things I have in common with Bowers: being shorter than most of the polar dudes and afraid of spiders. Any other measure of competence/fortitude/bravery/organization: advantage Bowers.

Bowers was of a very dif­fer­ent build. Aged 28, he was only 5 feet 4 inches in height...give me a snowy ice-floe wav­ing about on the top of a black swell, a ship thrown aback, a sledge-party al­most shattered, or one that has just up­set their sup­per on to the floor-cloth of the tent (which is much the same thing), and I will lie down and cry for Bowers to come and lead me to food and safety. Those whom the gods love die young...

This is years after the Belgica but they still haven't figured out exactly how scurvy works:

The only thing which is cer­tain to stop scurvy is fresh ve­get­ables: fresh meat when life is oth­er­wise un­der ex­treme con­di­tions will not do so…

Shots fired:

The mind of a horse is a very lim­ited con­cern, re­ly­ing al­most en­tirely upon memory. He rivals our politi­cians in that he has little real in­tel­lect.

More shots:

Sci­ence is a big thing if you can travel a Winter Jour­ney in her cause and not re­gret it. I am not sure she is not big­ger still if you can have deal­ings with sci­ent­ists and con­tin­ue to fol­low in her path.

The winter solstice is a big deal:

In­side the hut are or­gies. We are very merry—and in­deed why not? The sun turns to come back to us to­night, and such a day comes only once a year...Tit­us got three things which pleased him im­mensely, a sponge, a whistle, and a pop­gun which went off when he pressed in the butt. For the rest of the even­ing he went round ask­ing wheth­er you were sweat­ing. “No.” “Yes, you are,” he said, and wiped your face with the sponge. “If you want to please me very much you will fall down when I shoot you,” he said to me, and then he went round shoot­ing every­body. At in­ter­vals he blew the whistle.

Cherry-Garrard on the Winter Journey. No punches pulled. :(

I for one had come to that point of suf­fer­ing at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the hero­ism of the dy­ing—they little know—it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly cre­vasse, and bliss­ful sleep. The trouble is to go on. …

It was the dark­ness that did it. I don’t be­lieve minus sev­enty tem­per­at­ures would be bad in day­light, not com­par­at­ively bad, when you could see where you were go­ing, where you were step­ping, where the sledge straps were, the cook­er, the primus, the food; could see your foot­steps lately trod­den deep in­to the soft snow that you might find your way back to the rest of your load; could see the lash­ings of the food bags; could read a com­pass without strik­ing three or four dif­fer­ent boxes to find one dry match; could read your watch to see if the bliss­ful mo­ment of get­ting out of your bag was come without grop­ing in the snow all about; when it would not take you five minutes to lash up the door of the tent, and five hours to get star­ted in the morn­ing. …

But in these days we were nev­er less than four hours from the mo­ment when Bill cried “Time to get up” to the time when we got in­to our har­ness.

But the planets are his friends:

Gen­er­ally we steered by Jupiter, and I nev­er see him now without re­call­ing his friend­ship in those days.

Cherry-Garrard is maybe the odd man out of this trio:

we just lay on our backs and gazed up in­to the sky, where, so the oth­ers said, there was blaz­ing the most won­derful aurora they had ever seen. I did not see it, be­ing so nearsighted and un­able to wear spec­tacles ow­ing to the cold.

By "degrees of frost" he means degrees below the freezing point, 32 F. This is just...a scale I had never considered before and is mindblowing.

The day lives in my memory as that on which I found out that re­cords are not worth mak­ing. The ther­mo­met­er as swung by Bowers after lunch at 5:51 p.m. re­gistered −77.5°, which is 109½ de­grees of frost, and is I sup­pose as cold as any­one will want to en­dure in dark­ness and iced-up gear and clothes.

Phantom Tollbooth vibes: the secret to doing the impossible is not knowing it's impossible!

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what ap­pears to be a com­mon­sense cer­tainty: he achieves the im­possible. We nev­er spoke our thoughts: we dis­cussed the Age of Stone which was to come, when we built our cosy warm rock hut on the slopes of Mount Ter­ror, and ran our stove with pen­guin blub­ber, and pickled little Em­per­ors in warmth and dry­ness. We were quite in­tel­li­gent people, and we must all have known that we were not go­ing to see the pen­guins and that it was folly to go for­ward. And yet with quiet per­sever­ance, in per­fect friend­ship, al­most with gen­tle­ness those two men led on.

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. I nev­er heard an angry word: once only (when this same day I could not pull Bill up the cliff out of the pen­guin rook­ery) I heard an im­pa­tient one: and these groans were the nearest ap­proach to com­plaint. Most men would have howled. “I think we reached bed­rock last night,” was strong lan­guage for Bill. “I was in­ca­pa­cit­ated for a short time,” he says in his re­port to Scott.

Some of the motivation for researching emperor penguins in particular derives from recapitulation theory, which was already on the way out by the early 20th century. Emperor penguins are flightless birds, so maybe they represent a very old branch of the bird family, and maybe studying their embryos in particular could tell us about the proto-evolution of birds? For Wilson, at least, this is the big drive. But after this miserable, agonizing, unprecedentedly dangerous journey, they're there basically long enough to grab five eggs...and Cherry-Garrard breaks both of his because he's a klutz, so there are only three left by the time they turn around.

On their way back the tent blows away in the blizzard and they (or at least Cherry-Garrard) are like "okay that's it, we're finished for sure..."

Face to face with real death one does not think of the things that tor­ment the bad people in the tracts, and fill the good people with bliss. I might have spec­u­lated on my chances of go­ing to Heav­en; but can­didly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to re­view the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good in­ten­tions: the road to Heav­en is paved with lost op­por­tun­it­ies...Thus im­pi­ously I set out to die, mak­ing up my mind that I was not go­ing to try and keep warm, that it might not take too long, and think­ing I would try and get some morphia from the med­ic­al case if it got very bad. Not a bit hero­ic, and en­tirely true! Yes! com­fort­able, warm read­er. Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dy­ing.

And then quite nat­ur­ally and no doubt dis­ap­point­ingly to those who would like to read of my last ag­on­ies (for who would not give pleas­ure by his death?) I fell asleep...

Storm force is force 11, and force 12 is the biggest wind which can be logged: Bowers logged it force 11, but he was al­ways so afraid of over­es­tim­at­ing that he was in­clined to un­der­rate…

But somehow the storm clears and they miraculously find the tent:

Bird­ie was all for an­oth­er go at the Em­per­or pen­guins. Dear Bird­ie, he nev­er would ad­mit that he was beaten—I don’t know that he ever really was!

And turn around and make it back, which is still painful but at least they're used to it by now.

How good the memor­ies of those days are. With jokes about Bird­ie’s pic­ture hat: with songs we re­membered off the gramo­phone: with ready words of sym­pathy for frost­bit­ten feet: with gen­er­ous smiles for poor jests: with sug­ges­tions of happy beds to come. We did not for­get the Please and Thank you, which mean much in such cir­cum­stances, and all the little links with de­cent civil­iz­a­tion which we could still keep go­ing. I’ll swear there was still a grace about us when we staggered in. And we kept our tem­pers—even with God.

There's a very funny epilogue about trying to see the eggs in the museum to make sure they arrived safely, and/or what scientific knowledge could be gleaned from them, if any.

As the day wears on, minor of­fi­cials, passing to and from the Pres­ence, look at him doubt­fully and ask his busi­ness. The reply is al­ways the same, “I am wait­ing for a re­ceipt for some pen­guins’ eggs.” At last it be­comes clear from the Ex­plorer’s ex­pres­sion that what he is really wait­ing for is not to take a re­ceipt but to com­mit murder.

Cherry-Garrard's diary from immediately after they returned to the base at Cape Evans:

We are looked upon as be­ings who have come from an­oth­er world...Bird­ie is now full of schemes for do­ing the trip again next year.

The next phase is starting to make sledging journeys to lay depots/supplies for the summer trek. This involves a lot of experimentation with dogs, ponies, and motor transportation. William Lashly on the motors:

here is an end to the mo­tor sledges. I can’t say I am sorry be­cause I am not, and the oth­ers are, I think, of the same opin­ion as my­self.

Retrospective from Cherry-Garrard on the motors:

As an ex­per­i­ment they were suc­cess­ful in the South, but Scott nev­er knew their true pos­sib­il­it­ies; for they were the dir­ect an­cest­ors of the “tanks” in France.

The scare quotes are his, it's 1922 and the idea of armored vehicles is still new and groundbreaking!

On the other hand the horses aren't much better, in particular, Oates (the horse expert) is stuck with a troublesome horse named Christopher who's just a recurring character in terms of being Very Naughty. Like, two weeks after he's killed people are still writing about "oh yeah, we have to fix the odometer that Christopher destroyed."

Bowers:

Wear­ing goggles has ab­so­lutely pre­ven­ted any re­cur­rence of snow-blind­ness. Cap­tain Scott says they make me see everything through rose-col­oured spec­tacles.

Finally, shortly before the end of the year, Cherry-Garrard is sent back with the supporting party. The contrast between diary!Cherry in the moment and retrospective!Cherry gets poignant in terms of what is and isn't foreshadowing. :( Diary!Cherry:

This even­ing has been rather a shock. As I was get­ting my fin­nesko on to the top of my ski bey­ond the tent Scott came up to me, and said that he was afraid he had rather a blow for me. Of course I knew what he was go­ing to say, but could hardly grasp that I was go­ing back—to­mor­row night...Wilson told me it was a tos­sup wheth­er Tit­us or I should go on: that be­ing so I think Tit­us will help him more than I can. I said all I could think of—he seemed so cut up about it, say­ing ‘I think, some­how, it is spe­cially hard on you.’ I said I hoped I had not dis­ap­poin­ted him, and he caught hold of me and said ‘No—no—No,’ so if that is the case all is well.

Lashly has an exciting Christmas.

First of all it was very much cre­vassed and pretty rot­ten; we were of­ten in dif­fi­culties as to which way we should tackle it. I had the mis­for­tune to drop clean through, but was stopped with a jerk when at the end of my har­ness. It was not of course a very nice sen­sa­tion, es­pe­cially on Christ­mas Day, and be­ing my birth­day as well. While spin­ning round in space like I was it took me a few seconds to gath­er to­geth­er my thoughts and see what kind of a place I was in. It cer­tainly was not a fairy’s place. When I had col­lec­ted my­self I heard someone call­ing from above, ‘Are you all right, Lashly?’ I was all right it is true, but I did not care to be dangling in the air on a piece of rope, es­pe­cially when I looked round and saw what kind of a place it was. It seemed about 50 feet deep and 8 feet wide, and 120 feet long. This in­form­a­tion I had ample time to gain while dangling there. I could meas­ure the width with my ski sticks, as I had them on my wrists...Any­how Mr. Evans, Bowers and Crean hauled me out and Crean wished me many happy re­turns of the day, and of course I thanked him po­litely and the oth­ers laughed, but all were pleased I was not hurt bar a bit of a shake.

Lashly :handshake: Bjarne Mamen from the Karluk

the poles are not a very fun place to have a birthday :(

Lawrence Oates: hold my beer

More Lashly:

Decem­ber 31, 1911. After do­ing 7 miles we camped and done the sledges which took us un­til 11 p.m., and we had to dig out to get them done by then, made a de­pot and saw the old year out and the new year in. We all wondered where we should be next New Year...

Janu­ary 2, 1912. The drag­ging is still very heavy and we seem to be al­ways climb­ing high­er. We are now over 10,000 feet above sea level. It makes it bad as we don’t get enough heat in our food and the tea is not strong enough to run out of the pot. Everything gets cold so quickly, the wa­ter boils at about 196° f.

Cherry-Garrard, December 22, just after his group turns around:

Scott said some nice things when we said good­bye. Any­way he has only to av­er­age sev­en miles a day to get to the Pole on full ra­tions—it’s prac­tic­ally a cert for him. I do hope he takes Bill and Bird­ie.

At the last minute, Scott decides to take a group of five to the Pole instead of the expected four, maybe to make sure more branches of the military are represented or something dumb like that? Anyway, the last returning party consists of only three people, Lashly, Crean, and Edward "Teddy" Evans (there's also an Edgar Evans with Scott's group). Edward Evans is the officer so he's nominally in charge of the group, but things won't last, as you'll see.

When writing this, Cherry-Garrard reaches out to Lashly to see if he can jog his memories about anything, because nothing about this part of the journey has been published. Lashly's like "of course, yeah, and by the way I think I have a diary around here somewhere...!" And maybe they just never bothered to ask the "seamen" for notes? Anyway. These are a few excerpts from Lashly. I have never seen this notation for "half past five" before!

13th Janu­ary 1912. This has been a very bad day for us, what with ice­falls and cre­vasses. We feel all full up to­night. The strain is tre­mend­ous some days. We are camped, but not at the de­pot, but we hope to pick it up some time to­mor­row. We shall be glad to get off the Sum­mit, as the tem­per­at­ure is very low. We ex­pec­ted the party would have reached the Pole yes­ter­day, provid­ing they had any­thing of luck.

19th Janu­ary 1912...Last night we left a note for Capt. Scott, but did not say much about our dif­fi­culties just above the Cloud­maker, as it would be bet­ter to tell him when we see him.

22nd Janu­ary 1912...as soon as we sighted the Bar­ri­er, Crean let go one huge yell enough to fright­en the ponies out of their graves of snow...

27th Janu­ary 1912...it was very hot, any­one could take off all their clothes and march. It is really too hot for this part of the world, but I daresay we shall soon get it a bit colder.

28th Janu­ary 1912...Mr. Evans is still very loose in his bowels. This, of course, hinders us, as we have had to stop sev­er­al times.

1st Feb­ru­ary 1912...Mr. Evans and my­self have been out 100 days today. I have had to change my shirt again. This is the last clean side I have got. I have been wear­ing two shirts and each side will now have done duty next the skin, as I have changed round each month, and I have cer­tainly found the be­ne­fit of it, and on the point we all three agree...

4th Feb­ru­ary 1912...We have taken out our food and left nearly all the pem­mic­an as we don’t re­quire it on ac­count of none of us caring for it, there­fore we are leav­ing it be­hind for the oth­ers. They may re­quire it. We have left our note and wished them every suc­cess on their way, but we have de­cided it is best not to say any­thing about Mr. Evans be­ing ill or suf­fer­ing from scurvy.

9th Feb­ru­ary 1912. A very fine day and quite warm. Reached the de­pot at 5.5 p.m. and we all had a good feed of oat­meal.

13th Feb­ru­ary 1912. We got away in good time, but pro­gress was slow, and Mr. Evans could not go, and we con­sul­ted awhile and came to the con­clu­sion it would be best to put him on the sledge, oth­er­wise he may not pull through, so we stopped and camped, and de­cided to drop everything we can pos­sibly do without, so we have only got our sleep­ing bags, cook­er, and what little food and oil we have left. Our load is not much, but Mr. Evans on the sledge makes it pretty heavy work for us both, but he says he is com­fort­able now. This morn­ing he wished us to leave him, but this we could not think of. We shall stand by him to the end one way or oth­er, so we are the mas­ters today. He has got to do as we wish and we hope to pull him through. This morn­ing when we de­poted all our gear I changed my socks and got my foot badly frost­bit­ten, and the only way was to fetch it round. So al­though Mr. Evans was so bad he pro­posed to stuff it on his stom­ach to try and get it right again. I did not like to risk such a thing as he is cer­tainly very weak, but we tried it, and it suc­ceeded in bring­ing it round, thanks to his thought­ful­ness, and I shall nev­er for­get the kind­ness be­stowed on me at a crit­ic­al time in our travels, but I think we could go to any length of trouble to as­sist one an­oth­er; in such time and such a place we must trust in a high­er power to pull us through. When we pack up now and have to move off we have to get everything ready be­fore we at­tempt to move the tent, as it is im­possible for our lead­er now to stand, there­fore it is ne­ces­sary to get him ready be­fore we start. We then pull the sledge along­side his bag and lift him on to it and strap him on. It is a pain­ful piece of work and he takes it pretty well, but we can’t help hurt­ing him, as it is very awk­ward to lift him, the snow be­ing soft and the light so bad, but he don’t com­plain. The only thing we hear him grind his teeth.

18th Feb­ru­ary 1912. I star­ted to move Mr. Evans this morn­ing, but he com­pletely col­lapsed and fain­ted away. Crean was very up­set and al­most cried, but I told him it was no good to cre­ate a scene but put up a bold front and try to as­sist. I really think he thought Mr. Evans had gone, but we man­aged to pull him through...

While Lashly looks after Evans, Crean walks the last 30+ miles to get help, alone, with no skis or tent or anything. Reaches the hut right before a blizzard sets in, and sends help for Lashly. They all make it back in one piece.

Cherry-Garrard adds in brackets after the January 13th entry: [Scott reached the Pole on Janu­ary 17.] Again, the low-key editorializing makes it richer than a single narrative voice would have.

Cherry-Garrard explains in detail that, based on all the preparations they'd made, the Polar party expected to have plenty of rations for the remainder of the trek. Bringing the dogs south to one of the later depots would be helpful in terms of potentially expediting their arrival to the ship, which would have to leave before the ice got too thick; however, this was only an expediency and never part of the plan that the dogs would have to provide them more food. Even in the scenario where they had to stay another year, some of the party (read: Bowers, of course) would definitely be up for that. So Atkinson, who's the leader of the logistics party at that point, was in the right to send Cherry-Garrard and Dmitri Gerov to One Ton Depot, but not farther. (Atkinson, Gerov, and some of the dogs had been the ones to rescue Evans, which was an incredible success and also put more strain on the dogs than had been expected.) Anyway, there's an aside about "it sucks in retrospect that they were so close and we didn't know, but please don't blame Atkinson, he did everything right." So the evaluation for posterity is pretty clear on that one.

Cherry-Garrard's diary:

March 20...I was feel­ing rot­ten, and thought that to go out and clear the win­dow and door would do me good. This I did, but came back in a big squall, passing Atkin­son as I came in. Then I felt my­self go­ing faint, and re­mem­ber push­ing the door to get in if pos­sible. I knew no more un­til I came to on the floor just in­side the door, hav­ing broken some ten­dons in my right hand in fall­ing.

March 25...We both, I think, feel quite com­fort­able, in com­par­is­on, about Camp­bell: he only wants to ex­er­cise care, and his great care was al­most a by­word on the ship. They are fresh and they have plenty of seal.

editor!Cherry's footnote: "As a mat­ter of fact this was not the case."

Anyway, the Polar party never returns and they realize they must have died. They won't be able to travel until next spring (southern hemisphere spring, so October/November), so they have to decide what they're going to do then.

In April, Cherry-Garrard's thought process is:

As we neared the Cape Atkin­son turned to me: “Would you go for Camp­bell or the Po­lar Party next year?” he said. “Camp­bell,” I answered: just then it seemed to me un­think­able that we should leave live men to search for those who were dead.

But when the group talks it over over the winter...

Camp­bell’s Party might have been picked up by the Terra Nova. Pen­nell meant to have an­oth­er try to reach him on his way north, and it was prob­able that the ship would not be able to com­mu­nic­ate again with Cape Evans ow­ing to ice: on the oth­er hand it was likely that the ship had not been able to re­lieve him. It also seemed that he could not have trav­elled down the coast at this time, ow­ing to the state of the sea-ice. The danger to him and his men was primar­ily dur­ing the winter: every day after the winter his danger was lessened. If we star­ted in the end of Oc­to­ber to re­lieve Camp­bell, es­tim­at­ing the prob­able date of ar­rival of the ship, we judged that we could reach him only five or six weeks be­fore the ship re­lieved him. All the same Camp­bell and his men might be alive, and, hav­ing lived through the winter, the ar­rival of help might make the dif­fer­ence between life and death....

The first ob­ject of the ex­ped­i­tion had been the Pole. If some re­cord was not found, their suc­cess or fail­ure would forever re­main un­cer­tain. Was it due not only to the men and their re­l­at­ives, but also to the ex­ped­i­tion, to as­cer­tain their fate if pos­sible?...

It was with all this in our minds that we sat down one even­ing in the hut to de­cide what was to be done. The prob­lem was a hard one. On the one hand we might go south, fail en­tirely to find any trace of the Po­lar Party, and while we were fruit­lessly trav­el­ling all the sum­mer Camp­bell’s men might die for want of help. On the oth­er hand we might go north, to find that Camp­bell’s men were safe, and as a con­sequence the fate of the Po­lar Party and the res­ult of their ef­forts might re­main forever un­known. Were we to for­sake men who might be alive to look for those whom we knew were dead?

These were the points put by Atkin­son to the meet­ing of the whole party. He ex­pressed his own con­vic­tion that we should go south, and then each mem­ber was asked what he thought. No one was for go­ing north: one mem­ber only did not vote for go­ing south, and he pre­ferred not to give an opin­ion. Con­sid­er­ing the com­plex­ity of the ques­tion, I was sur­prised by this un­an­im­ity. We pre­pared for an­oth­er South­ern Jour­ney.

It is im­possible to ex­press and al­most im­possible to ima­gine how dif­fi­cult it was to make this de­cision. Then we knew noth­ing: now we know all. And noth­ing is harder than to real­ize in the light of facts the doubts which oth­ers have ex­per­i­enced in the fog of un­cer­tainty.

(I did a double-take at the "oh yeah, we didn't even know if they got to the Pole or not" line. For context, by March 8, Amundsen's expedition was in Australia and had sent telegrams to the press informing them of their success in reaching the South Pole. Not only does Atkinson's party not know whether Scott "succeeded," they don't know about Amundsen!!)

We were too care­ful about killing an­im­als. I have ex­plained how Camp­bell’s party was landed at Evans Coves. Some of the party wanted to kill some seals on the off chance of the ship not turn­ing up to re­lieve them. This was be­fore they were in any way alarmed. But it was de­cided that life might be taken un­ne­ces­sar­ily if they did this—and that winter this party nearly died of star­va­tion. And yet this coun­try has al­lowed pen­guins to be killed by the mil­lion every year for Com­merce and a farth­ing’s worth of blub­ber.

We nev­er killed un­less it was ne­ces­sary, and what we had to kill was used to the ut­most both for food and for the sci­entif­ic work in hand. The first Em­per­or pen­guin we ever saw at Cape Evans was cap­tured after an ex­cit­ing chase out­side the hut in the middle of a bliz­zard. He kept us busy for days: the zo­olo­gist got a mu­seum skin, show­ing some vari­ation from the usu­al col­or­a­tion, a skel­et­on, and some use­ful ob­ser­va­tion on the di­gest­ive glands: the para­sit­o­lo­gist got a new tape­worm: we all had a change of diet. Many a pheas­ant has died for less.

Later Cherry-Garrard consults with Fridtjof Nansen (north pole explorer, Amundsen's hero) for advice on equipment. "And there was only one sleeping bag!!" trope just dropped.

He con­siders that two- or three-men sleep­ing-bags are in­fin­itely warm­er than single bags: ob­jec­tions of dis­com­fort are over­come, for you are so tired you go to sleep any­way.

Adventures in dog-driving:

Dog-driv­ing is the dev­il! Be­fore I star­ted, my lan­guage would not have shamed a Sunday School, and now—if it were not Sunday I would tell you more about it. It takes all kinds to make a world and a dog-team. We had ar­is­to­crats like Os­man, and Bolshev­iks like Kris­rav­itza, and lun­at­ics like Hol-hol. The present-day em­ploy­er of la­bour might stand amazed when he saw a crowd of pro­spect­ive work­men go mad with joy at the sight of their driver ap­proach­ing them with a har­ness in his hands. The most ar­dent trade uni­on­ist might boil with rage at the sight of el­ev­en or thir­teen huskies drag­ging a heavy load, in­clud­ing their idle mas­ter, over the floe with every ap­pear­ance of in­tense joy.... Some­times a team got a down upon a dog without our be­ing able to dis­cov­er their doggy reas­on. In any case we had to watch care­fully to pre­vent them car­ry­ing out their in­ten­tions, their meth­od of pun­ish­ment al­ways be­ing the same and end­ing, if un­checked, in what they prob­ably called justice, and we called murder.

Anyway, spoiler alert, they find the bodies:

Diary!Cherry (emphasis in original)

We have everything—re­cords, di­ar­ies, etc. They have among oth­er things sev­er­al rolls of pho­to­graphs, a met­eor­o­lo­gic­al log kept up to March 13, and, con­sid­er­ing all things, a great many geo­lo­gic­al spe­ci­mens. And they have stuck to everything. It is mag­ni­fi­cent that men in such case should go on pulling everything that they have died to gain.

Narrator!Cherry (cf. Edna St. Vincent Millay)

We sor­ted out the gear, re­cords, pa­pers, di­ar­ies, spare cloth­ing, let­ters, chro­no­met­ers, fin­nesko, socks, a flag. There was even a book which I had lent Bill for the jour­ney—and he had brought it back. Some­how we learnt that Amund­sen had been to the Pole, and that they too had been to the Pole, and both items of news seemed to be of no im­port­ance whatever. There was a let­ter there from Amund­sen to King Haakon. There were the per­son­al chatty little notes we had left for them on the Beard­more—how much more im­port­ant to us than all the roy­al let­ters in the world…

November 17...It was al­most op­press­ively hot yes­ter­day—but I’ll nev­er grumble about heat again

November 20...Note on Mules.—The most ar­dent ad­mirer of mules could not say that they were a suc­cess...They ate dog-bis­cuit as long as they thought we were not look­ing—but as soon as they real­ized they were meant to eat it they went on hun­ger-strike again.

I know what he means, but, lol.

Scott was 43, Wilson 39, Evans 37, Oates 32, and Bowers 28 years old. Bowers was ex­cep­tion­ally old for his age.

Bowers January 4 with footnote:

Teddy and party gave us three cheers, and Crean was half in tears. They have a feather­weight sledge to go back with of course, and ought to run down their dis­tance eas­ily.

[It is to be no­ticed that every re­turn party, in­clud­ing the Po­lar Party, was sup­posed by their com­pan­ions to be go­ing to have a very much easi­er time than, as a mat­ter of fact, they had. —A. C.-G.]

Bowers. I'm really invested in this hat now.

Janu­ary 19. A splen­did clear morn­ing with a fine S. W. wind blow­ing. Dur­ing break­fast time I sewed a flap at­tach­ment on to the hood of my green hat so as to pre­vent the wind from blow­ing down my neck on the march.

Cherry-Garrard going hard again:

Prac­tic­ally any man who un­der­takes big po­lar jour­neys must face the pos­sib­il­ity of hav­ing to com­mit sui­cide to save his com­pan­ions, and the dif­fi­culty of this must not be over­rated, for it is in some ways more de­sir­able to die than to live if things are bad enough: we got to that stage on the Winter Jour­ney. I re­mem­ber dis­cuss­ing this ques­tion with Bowers, who had a scheme of do­ing him­self in with a pick­axe if ne­ces­sity arose, though how he could have ac­com­plished it I don’t know: or, as he said, there might be a cre­vasse and at any rate there was the med­ic­al case. I was hor­ri­fied at the time: I had nev­er faced the thing out with my­self like that.

I'm skimming through the Polar party's return because that's the famous part, if you've read this far you probably know the famous quotes, or if not, you can use the Google machine :P

Evaluation of their party (compared to Amundsen's):

We did not suf­fer from too little brains or dar­ing: we may have suffered from too much.

More adventures with penguins:

I tried tak­ing eggs from nests and was de­lighted to find that new eggs ap­peared: these I care­fully marked, and it was not un­til I opened one two days later to find in­side an em­bryo at least two weeks old, that I real­ized that pen­guins ad­ded baby-snatch­ing to their oth­er im­mor­al­it­ies...All the world loves a pen­guin: I think it is be­cause in many re­spects they are like ourselves, and in some re­spects what we should like to be.

The life of an Adélie pen­guin is one of the most un­chris­ti­an and suc­cess­ful in the world. The pen­guin which went in for be­ing a true be­liev­er would nev­er stand the ghost of a chance. Watch them go to bathe. Some fifty or sixty agit­ated birds are gathered upon the ice-foot, peer­ing over the edge, telling one an­oth­er how nice it will be, and what a good din­ner they are go­ing to have. But this is all swank: they are really wor­ried by a hor­rid sus­pi­cion that a sea-leo­pard is wait­ing to eat the first to dive. The really noble bird, ac­cord­ing to our the­or­ies, would say, “I will go first and if I am killed I shall at any rate have died un­selfishly, sac­ri­fi­cing my life for my com­pan­ions”; and in time all the most noble birds would be dead. What they really do is to try and per­suade a com­pan­ion of weak­er mind to plunge: fail­ing this, they hast­ily pass a con­scrip­tion act and push him over. And then—bang, hel­ter-skel­ter, in go all the rest.

Okay, like I said, this post is way too long, but hopefully this is a fun abridgement/enticement as to wtb is going on in Antarctica fandom. :D