‘We
Can Be Heroes, Forever And Ever’ David Bowie.
Who
in the annals of the climbing world, a history that includes a Pope
(Achille Ratti), a King of the Belgians (Albert 1 who died solo
climbing in the Ardennes) and a Prime Minister (Winston Churchill)
should we award the appellation to of being a Hero? Maybe that might
be best left to others outside of the sport to decide, but someone I
met as a teenager, Freddy Spencer Chapman I guess would meet any of
the needed criteria? For over three years in the Second- World War
he blew up trains, bridges and enemy soldiers in the jungles of
Malaya. It is odd really that the name F .S. Chapman doesn’t figure
higher up the roll call of great British heroes, in fact you have
probably never heard of him? Two biographies, ‘One Man’s Jungle
‘, by Ralph Barker published in 1975 and a second by B. Moynahan
‘The Jungle Soldier’ in 2009 inform the reader of Chapman’s
life as a guerrilla soldier, as did his own account ‘The Jungle is
Neutral’ published nearer to the events in 1948. But Freddy did so
much more in his life, particularly climbing, fell running, skiing
activities, Greenland and Himalayan explorations, and it is of these
I wish to write.
When
I started to climb as an eleven year old in 1947, one of the few
climbing books then widely available in Public libraries was
‘Helvellyn to Himalaya’ by Freddy which had been published under
stringent war time restrictions in 1940. And though the writing
reflects very much the serious stiff upper lip attitude of those
times, underselling some of the remarkable events the author took a
major part in; it is still a good read. The descent off Chomolhari
(7341m) post achieving the first ascent is one of the great survival
stories, as impressive as ‘Touching the Void’ or ‘The Bond’
but hardly now noted. Although General Bruce (leader of the second
British attempt on Everest 1922 and the third in 1924)), accorded it
at the time as ‘The 8th
wonder of the World!
But
to begin at the beginning. He was born in 1907 in London but he was
effectively an orphan from the age of two, his mother died a few
months after his birth and his solicitor father went off to seek work
in Canada, and on returning perished in the First War at the Somme.
Freddy was brought up by an elderly vicar and his wife at Cartmel on
the edge of The Lake District and after attending a Preparatory
School in Ben Rhydding , he entered Sedbergh School. Where he
initially ran into difficulties by refusing to take part in organised
team games, cricket and rugby, preferring to walk the nearby hills
and to study natural history; bird watching, star gazing, flora, and
butterflies, but he gained entry to Cambridge in 1926 to read history
and English.
It
was at Cambridge he started to climb, joined the CUMC, became a night
climber on the Universities spires, and met its Presiding spirit
Geoffrey Winthrop Young. Other Club members were Laurence Wager, Jack
Longland, Gino Watkins, Charles Warren et al. It was with Ted Hicks
however that he did most of his rock climbing, their first route
together being The Little Gully on Pavey Ark in shoes without a rope.
They even disturbed a fox in its depths which delighted Freddy. Over
the next few years he ascended over a hundred climbs with Hicks,
usually with the latter in the lead; Gimmer Crack, New West on
Pillar, routes on Dow Crag such as Brodrick’s and The Great Central
Route etc. Freddy, dark haired having grown to above middling in
height and lithe however never saw himself as an outstanding rock
climber but in comparison to Hicks who was probably in that era only
exceeded by Kirkus and Edwards, maybe he was being too hard in
assessing his own abilities. He liked to solo and climbed lots of
Severes but he avoided Very Severes as too serious to climb on his
own, even though being muscular he felt he lacked the ‘genius’ to
do so!
He
writes of how solo climbing was frowned upon by some of the climbing
fraternity in that era, such as when he was traversing the Skye Ridge
on his own and decided to climb the Inaccessible Pinnacle. Ascending
its short side he reached the summit, but as he was descending he was
to be challenged by the leader of a second party, arriving onto the
ledge just below the top block, led by a well known climber of the
‘old school’ Bobby Woodhouse. Who proceeded to lecture him on the
iniquities and dangers of solo climbing, to which he had to give due
attention as the man had taught him physics at school. Thanking him
for his sage advice, Freddy immediately descended by the way he had
ascended.
FSC-on left, adventuring in an unknown location: Photo British Library
One
can imagine how ‘keen’ such a group of student climbers getting
together at Cambridge would be despite how in the late 1920’s
travelling would be much more difficult. And Cambridge is nowhere
near the crags, but one weekend fed up with no climbing action,
Chapman along with Wager, Longland, Watkins and Charles Warren
decamped to a limestone crag near Matlock. Warren soloing behind
Longland got into difficulties and was literally hanging clear by his
hands, the latter climbed down and grabbed hold of his wrists, but
just could not hold on for long and Warren fell first 20 feet to land
on a small ledge, where he could not balance up and he shot off down
again another 20feet to land in a sycamore tree, unhurt, with much
laughter but some surprise by the others present at such an escape.
You might ask as to how it was Freddy was travelling around so much
in that era? He had bought an ancient motor bike and side car for £8
on which he and two other passengers made it to Ogwen, Langdale and
Skye and even as far as the Alps.
Besides
being active in the UK, this CUMC group were also climbing in the
Alps. Chapman writes in Helvellyn to Himalaya about some of the
climbs he made with a close friend of those days, Robert Chew (who
later gained fame as the Head of Gordonstoun School when Prince
Charles was his pupil, and it was in visiting to give a lecture there
at that event I became a confirmed Republican), also with Longland
plus Wager. Bad weather in Chamonix often restricted them to voie
normals on the Aiguilles; the Requin, the Argentiere, and Le Tour but
a highlight was a traverse they made of the Meije in the Dauphine
range.
It was also during these years he started skiing, at which he
found he was good at. He made several tours and climbs on ski, but he
also made a name as a downhill racer. In 1929 he took part in two of
the most famous such races, The Parsenn Derby and the Arlberg
Kandahar.
It
was to be in Davos that year two events occurred of some significance
in his life story, the first an action that gives a different view of
his personality than I had been led to believe, of an over serious
humourless-character, and the second was to lead on to his becoming
an outstanding figure in Arctic exploration. The first incident
concerns a large nude statue of a naked man in the Park at Davos;
about which a friend of Chapman’s had taken on a bet to paint this
copper statue crimson, but found on a closer examination of this he
had not the climbing skill necessary to carry this out, so he
persuaded Freddy to do this for him.
He did this at night under
darkness, but the next day all hell broke loose, a relative of the
man depicted in the statue living in Berlin decided to come to Davos
and to fight a duel with the perpetrator. And the Town’s
authorities threatened the artist with dire consequences once found.
Friends of Chapman were not impressed by such threats, they felt his
choice of colour was inappropriate, so he went out the next night and
painted the statue white. But just as he completed this the Police
arrived in force; and they chased after him as he tried to run away.
One caught up with him and ‘bang’ he was felled by a truncheon
blow to the head, following which he was arrested and jailed. At his
trial, he hit upon a novel defence; that led the court to treat him
more sympathetically than anticipated. He had done this as a
‘student’s rag!’ However he was fined £30 and costs, which
amounted in total to much more than he had then in his bank, but
fortunately for him an English resident in Davos organised a crowd
fund and between them paid his fine and costs to get him out of jail.
The
second event was to occur again in Davos in March 1929, when he was
skiing at night back to where he was staying and he met a friend from
Cambridge, Gino Watkins, already well known from his explorations in
Spitzbergen and from wintering in Labrador. After some pleasantries
he invited Chapman to take part in an expedition he was organising to
Greenland in 1930-1 as its ski expert and naturalist. Watkins was to
become a legend by this expedition, which was to help plot air routes
over the polar region from North America to Europe. It was successful
in this and it won Watkins-The Founder’s Medal of the Royal
Geographical Society. Chapman returned with Watkins in 1932-3 on a
small four man expedition, to East Greenland by which time he had
perfected his skills; including surviving more than 20 hours in a
seal skin kayak during a monumental storm at sea, he had also learned
to navigate by the stars, and he had needed to lead a small team
across the lethal ice cap to rescue a colleague stranded in
difficulty.
He also learned to speak fluent Inuit, getting on well
enough with the locals to father a son! For his participation in
these explorations he won the Polar Medal, and from this he also
wrote the first of his 8 books; this about the 1930-1 expedition,
‘Northern Lights’ which was successful and reprinted several
times. And Watkins, who disappeared whilst hunting seal in the
Tugtilik Fjord, his kayak being found floating upside down, was to
become even better known; for the mountain range in Greenland which
bears his name, as do several other mountains and a glacier in New
Zealand. There is also the Gino Watkins memorial fund administered by
Cambridge University and the Royal Geographical Society. He was only
25 when he died but he had achieved so much including ascending over
40 Peaks in the Alps, and membership of the Alpine Club (he must have
been its youngest member by far).
In
between expeditions, despite his youthful antipathy to organised
games, Freddy, had taken up fell running and he was persuaded by Dr A
W Wakefield, Doctor on the 1922 Everest Expedition, to make an
attempt on the ‘Bob Graham Round’. This set by the guest house
owner in Keswick of that name in June 1932 which entailed summiting
42 Lakeland Fells within 24 hours; covering 66miles (106km) and
26,900ft of ascent. Chapman did complete the round but missed out on
breaking Graham’s record by the fact that his route was more
circuitous, adding quite some distance. My own connection with the
Bob Graham Round is via Eric Beard who though already a cross
country/track runner when I first met him in 1955, I introduced to
climbing and the hills, where he was to discover that for him fell
running was what he was best at. When he died in a car crash on the
M6 in 1969 he held several of the major fell records, including the
Lakeland 24 hour, which he had extended in 1963 out to 56 Peaks in 23
hours 35minutes.
Post
the Arctic expeditions Chapman realised he needed to stabilise his
life and develop a career and he took up teaching. But he could not
resist accepting when invited by Marco Pallis in 1936 to travel out
to the Himalaya, to Sikkim and the Kanchenjunga area to attempt an
ascent of Simvu 22,360feet and its other satellite peaks. The party
was made up of Richard Nicholson, Dr R. C. Roaf, Jake Cooke, Chapman,
and led/organised by Pallis. Who in 1933 had led a similar size party
successfully to the Gangotri Himalaya and who I believe was one of
the most impressive polymath’s to have ever tied into a climbing
rope; I have written elsewhere about his life and achievements and
hope I have done justice to his memory. Back to Simvu, this turned
out to be a more difficult mountain than they had anticipated. I will
quote Chapman directly, ‘There seemed to be just one weak spot in
the formidable defences of the mountain, it was a most horrible
place, a vertical corner to be negotiated above which was a 20feet
wall of extremely steep ice.
After climbing the corner Pallis started
cutting up the ice wall, he was panting and groaning with the
exertion, fashioning both foot-and-hand holds. Frightened lest I
should completely fail to climb this formidable ice wall, but when at
last I had to climb I found it very exposed and airy but not
extraordinarily difficult. There were adequate steps, and it was
simply a matter of control and balance, but for all that I should not
have liked it much without the support of a rope!’ Pallis,
Nicholson, Cooke and Chapman thought they had had the difficulties
behind them, but once they had gained a straightforward ridge route
with the summit in sight, they were stopped by a huge crevasse.
Whilst trying to find a way across this it started to snow which
developed into a full on blizzard, and they were forced into a
difficult retreat.
The
bad weather continued and they had to abandon Simvu. Back at Base one
evening they held a most revealing debate amongst themselves about
the merits of Private and Grammar schooling. Interesting to myself in
that this illustrates for me of where climbers of their era were
coming from, for all but Cooke had been privately educated. Pallis
was a great believer in encouraging-an outstanding climber such as
Cooke (he had also supported Kirkus to take part in his 1933
Expedition) to participate in such exploratory mountaineering. Jake
Cooke a clerk in a Liverpool insurance office was one of the pioneers
of the Main Wall on Cyrn Las. In 1938 he was to enjoy a successful
Alpine season with Pallis, but he perished a short while later at
Dunkirk.
The
1936 Expedition then broke into two groups, for Pallis had developed
a keen interest in Tibet and hoped to visit that country but had been
refused entry, and so with Nicholson and Roaf he trekked over high
passes into Ladakh. Whilst Cooke, Chapman and Jock Harrison, who had
joined up with the other two after his partner had quitted the
mountains due to illness, stayed on in Sikkim to climb first The
Sphinx (23,500ft) and the more difficult Fluted Peak (20,000+ ft). At
the end of that Expedition Chapman was invited by the Political
Officer for Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet: Basil Gould, to accompany him
on a Diplomatic Mission to Lhasa that he was then organising. Freddy
was to act as its Secretary but also to be a photographer, cineaste
and make a film about their visit. This took place from July 1936
until February 1937 and Chapman wrote a book about this, ‘Lhasa.
The Holy City’.
He recruited three Sherpas, Nima, Kikuli and Pasang. The first two had good expedition experience, but Pasang who appeared to Freddy as very young, dour and the weakest of the three, he only agreed to take him because of the pleadings of the other two. How wrong appearances can be for Pasang became one of the most experienced, successful Sherpa climbers of his generation, and without him Chapman would not have been successful in climbing Chomolhari. He had great difficulty in finding another partner for the climb, but eventually Charles Crawford, then working for ICI in Calcutta, who Freddy only knew via the Himalayan Club agreed to this, but could only manage to get two weeks leave from his workplace to do so.
The
summit of Chomolhari was reached on 21st
May 1937 by Chapman and Pasang via its south east spur. Before that
event Crawford and Kikuli had descended off the mountain, from a camp
at 20,000ft, both were suffering from altitude sickness and
Crawford’s leave was up. Nima was at their Base, and thus there was
no one high on the mountain except the summit pair and it was from
that point the story really begins. Immediately they began the
descent they fell 400ft down the first steep slope they had to climb
down. Somehow Chapman stopped their fall with an ice axe break: with
Pasang , hanging out over a 3000ft drop. They reached their highest
camp, packed and started down, but a blizzard set in and though
exhausted they had to climb back up and erect their tent again.
FSC fell running in the English Lake District
Its
door opening became damaged and the snow burst in and their
equipment, including sleeping bags and matches became soaking wet.
Chapman had an emergency match box on his body, but it only contained
six strikes, and Pasang had damaged his snow goggles, was in pain and
had become blind in one eye. Next day after a terrible night they
packed and set off down again, but Pasang fell once more and though
Chapman held him, his rucksack burst open and they lost their only
cooking pot and most of their food. From thereon, on the steep ground
Freddy would descend, cut steps and climb back up and top rope Pasang
down. They could not find their ascent route and had only managed a
short distance before a heavy snow fall caused them to camp again.
Next
day they reached the ice fall but once again a blizzard set in, and
they were forced to camp once more. They could not get any sleep for
their sleeping bags were still wet through and their matches were now
used up. The snow had become so deep progress became ever slower, in
places it was thigh deep. They could not make any drinks or warm
food; this epic descent lasted for six days/nights with matters
becoming ever more serious. The worst event was when Chapman
fell-30feet down, a crevasse. The story of his struggles to climb
back out of this, shouting out instructions to Pasang in Tibetan,
conversing with difficulty, is one of the great climbing escape
stories. It took Freddy four hours to cut his way out, fashioning
foot and handholds in the icy wall of the crevasse. At last they
reached their Base to find Nima had descended thinking that they had
perished high on the peak. Once off the mountain they were greeted
almost as ghosts for most believed that they had died on Chomolhari.
Chomolhari
was to be Freddy’s high point in his climbing career, but Pasang
went on to almost summit K2 in 1939 with Fritz Wiessner, to make the
first ascent of Cho Oyu (8188mtrs) in 1954 with the Austrian’s
Tichy and Jochler and he acted as Sirdar for the 1956 Swiss
Expedition to Mount Everest achieving the 2nd/3rd
ascent and the first of Lhotse. Chapman was back in the UK teaching
when war broke out, but he was an obvious recruit for the SOE and at
the fall of Singapore, he was parachuted into the Japanese occupied
Malayan Jungle where he was to spend 3 ½ years involved in irregular
warfare. Being awarded the DSO and Bar.
After
the war he was back to teaching, and he had married and fathered
three sons. His work took him to Germany and Africa where he
delighted in viewing the wildlife and studying the flora. In 1953 he
published his philosophy of life in ‘Living Dangerously’;
revealing his keen interest in the arts, music, wildlife and a
remaining enthusiasm, for photography. For a period his achievements
seem to have been well regarded, besides the previously mentioned
Polar Medal, he also received several other similar awards, The Gill,
Mungo Park and the Lawrence of Arabia medals and his story was set
before the nation by an appearance on ‘This is Your Life’in 1964
interviewed by Eamon Andrews. But then as is the way with such the
media lost interest. In 1971 he was back in the UK at Reading
Univesity, acting as a Warden of one of its Halls. His health was
becoming a problem for he was suffering from severe back pain and
other difficulties, probably as a result of the war wounds he had
received in the jungle, for he had been shot three times and held
prisoner twice. In August 1971 he committed suicide; leaving his wife
a note stating ‘I don’t want you to have to nurse an invalid for
the rest of your life!’
Chomolhari
There
is a memorial to him on Pangkor Laut Island, off the west coast of
Malaya, for it was from there he was picked up by HMS Statesman in
May 1945; swimming out into the waters of The Emerald Bay. This is
now an up market tourist resort, and it is replete with a Chapman’s
Bar. The local authorities working with Chapman’s family also
organise each year Chapman’s Challenge. A biathlon, made up of a
run and a swim. Several members of Freddy’s family have taken part
in this and I guess if it had been on the go in 1930 it would have
been something he too would have been there keenly taking up the
challenge?
Dennis Gray: 2020
