OHYAT: A Strange and Strenuous Christmas

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY, the remaining men of the Southern Party celebrated the whitest Christmas they'd ever had.

Teddy paints the scene:

... in these little canvas shelters soon after 4 a.m. the sleepers became restless and occasionally one would wake, glance at one's watch, and doze again. Exactly at 5 a.m. our leader shouted "Evans" and both of us of that name replied, "Right-o, sir."

But don't think they got the day off! Oh no, it was fifteen more miles for them, across tricky crevasses which they thought they'd left behind.

"Lashly, whose 44th birthday it was, celebrated the occasion by falling into a crevasse 8ft wide. ... Lashly was none the worse for his fall, and one of my party wished him a "Happy Christmas" and another "Many Happy Returns of the Day" when he had regained safety. Lashly's reply was unprintable.

– E.R.G.R. Evans, South With Scott

A strange and strenuous Christmas for me, with plenty of snow to look at and very little else ... We were all falling into crevasses continually, but Lashly had the worst drop. ... I was glad at having noticed his rope rather worn, I had given him a new one a few days before ...

– Birdie Bowers

Birdie loved Christmas – he had been the one to make the 'Christmas' tree from sticks and feathers for their midwinter feast – and he made sure there was ample cheer out on the Polar Plateau as well.

We have had a great feed which I have kept hidden and out of the official weights since our departure from Winter Quarters. It consisted of a good fat hoosh with pony meat and ground biscuit. A chocolate hoosh made of water, cocoa, sugar, biscuit, raisins, and thickened with a spoonful of arrowroot. Then came 2 1/2 square inches of plum duff each, and a good mug of cocoa washed down the whole. In addition to this we had 4 caramels each and 4 squares of crystallized ginger. I positively could not eat all mine, and turned in feeling as if I had made a beast of myself. I wrote up my journal, and should have liked somebody to put me to bed.

ETA: I forgot my favourite part! This is also from Teddy:

After the others in my tent were asleep, little Birdie Bowers, bidding me "Good-night," said, "Teddy, if all is well next Christmas we will get hold of all the poor children we can and just stuff them full of nice things, won't we?"

MEANWHILE, the First Returning Party, on their way back down the glacier and without the benefit of Birdie's cunning quartermastery, had a much more meagre Christmas feast:

At lunch had chocolate 1 stick, and 2 1/2 spoonfuls of raisins. At dinner 1 1/2 cubic inches of plum pudding per man and 7 caramels. Feel happy but by no means full.

Silas Wright

Their day wasn't without festivity, though: Silas records that they spent "a few minutes at lunch collecting rocks from isolated moraines off Cloudmaker." Par-tay!