Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But our hearts will still be faithful to this Southern land of ours,
Though we wander in English meadows 'mid the scent of English flowers,
When the soft southerly breeze shakes the blossom away from the thorn,
And flings from the wild rose cup, the shining gift of the morn;
And when the scarlet poppies peep through the golden wheat,
As the stronger winds of Autumn march in with heavier feet;
And when the fields are snow clad, trees hard in a frosty rime,
Our thoughts still wander Southward, we shall think of the grey old time;
Again in dreams go back to our fight with the icy floe . . .
We shall dream of the ever increasing gales, the birds in their Northward flight;
The magic of twilight colours, the gloom of the long, long night . . .
And when, in the fading firelight, we turn these pages o'er,
We shall think of the times we wrote therein by that far off Southern shore.
With regret we shall close the story, yet ever in thought go back, . . .
Though the grip of the frost may be cruel, and relentless its icy hold,
Yet it knit our hearts together in that darkness stern and cold.
The war loomed over the
Endurance
expedition like a thundercloud. When it was declared, the
Boss offered the services of the whole expedition to the Admiralty. The telegram came back saying
simply 'Proceed'. Over the months and years on the ice, Shackleton wrote in
South
, 'The war was
a constant subject of discussion . . . and many campaigns were fought on the map during the long
months of drifting.' When he finally learnt of the horrors he wrote, 'We were like men arisen from
the dead to a world gone mad', and in Australia, on his way home, he issued a messianic appeal
to Australian men urging them to fight, drawing the analogy of 'the white warfare of the Antarc-
tic and the red warfare of Europe' from his extensive and well-polished arsenal of rhetoric. Like
Scott, he was used as a national icon at home to bolster morale. One newspaper wrote, after the
news of the epic rescue mission had broken, 'As long as Englishmen are prepared to do this kind
of thing, we need not lie awake dreading the boys of the dachshund breed.' Conan Doyle wrote,
'We can pass the eight Dreadnoughts, if we are sure of the eight Shackletons.' Every single one of
the men who had sat it out on Elephant Island went off to fight when he got home, and Shackleton
dedicated
South
'To my comrades who fell in the white warfare of the south and on the red fields
of France and Flanders'.
Even in peacetime, war has been used as an image for the exploration of the continent. Admiral
Byrd, one of the grand old men of America's Antarctica, wrote, 'The Antarctic was like war, in
one respect', and after listing names of ice camps in his book
Discovery
, published in the States
in 1935, he says, 'these names were later to be burned into the minds of my men, to become as
bitterly unforgettable as the localities of hard-fought engagements to the memories of soldiers.'
On Frank Hurley's first night in London after the
Endurance
expedition, the city was bombed. He
ends his topic, 'Emerged from a war with nature, we were destined to take our places in a war of
nations. Life is one long call to conflict, anyway.'
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