Paths of Glory

Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory KCB

Mallory’s brother, Trafford, died when his plane crashed in the Alps in November 1944, while he was on his way to take command of Allied Air Operations in the Pacific. It was thought he might have been piloting the aircraft at the time.

Trafford died at the age of fifty-two.

Arthur C. Benson

Mallory’s tutor became Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1915, and remained in that position until 1925. He wrote a moving tribute for Mallory’s memorial service at Cambridge, but was too ill to deliver it. He is best remembered for having written the words of “Land of Hope and Glory.”

Benson died in 1925, aged sixty-three.

THE CLIMBERS

Brigadier General C. G. Bruce CB MVO

Although severely wounded at Gallipoli, Bruce commanded his regiment on the North-West Frontier until 1920. He was President of the Alpine Club from 1923 to 1925, and appointed Hon. Colonel of the 5th Gurkha Rifles in 1931.

Bruce died in 1939, aged seventy-three.

Geoffrey Young D. Litt FRSL

Appointed as a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1925. Reader in Education at London University in 1932. President of the Alpine Club from 1940 to 1943. Young climbed the Matterhorn (14,692 feet) in 1928 aged fifty-two, and Zinal Rothorn (11,204 feet) in 1935 aged fifty-nine, despite being burdened with an artificial leg.

Young died in 1958, aged eighty-two.

George Finch FRS MBE

Appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1938. President of the Alpine Club from 1959 to 1961. In 1931 three of Finch’s friends fell to their deaths in the Alps, and he never climbed again.

Finch died in 1970, aged eighty-two.

His son, Peter Finch, became an actor. Peter died before he found out that he’d won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Actor in the film Network.

Lt. General Sir Edward Norton KBE DSO MC

Continued his career as a professional soldier, and after being ADC to King George VI was appointed Military Governor of Hong Kong. In 1926, awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

Held the world altitude record, 28,125 feet, until 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing conquered Everest.

Norton died in 1954, aged seventy.

T. Howard Somervell OBE MA MB B.Ch FRCS

Spent the rest of his professional life as a surgeon in a mission hospital in Travancore, southern India, where he became one of the world’s leading authorities on duodenal ulcers. In 1956 he retired and returned to England. President of the Alpine Club from 1962 to 1965.

Somervell died in 1975, after a bracing walk in the Lake District, aged eighty-five.

Professor Noel Odell

The Everest Committee turned down Odell’s request to be a member of the 1936 expedition to Everest on account of his age, fifty-one. That same year, he scaled Nanda Devi at 25,645 feet, the highest mountain to have been climbed at that time. No member of the 1936 Everest expedition managed to reach 24,000 feet.

Odell spent the rest of his professional life as a geologist, holding professorships at Harvard and McGill. He retired to Cambridge where he was made an Honorary Fellow of Clare College.

Odell died in 1981, aged ninety-six.

Lt. Colonel Henry Morshead DSO

The tops of three fingers of Morshead’s right hand were amputated after returning from the Everest expedition of 1924. He returned to India in 1926 as a surveyor. He was shot dead while out riding one evening in 1931, in Burma, by his sister’s Pakistani lover.