WAR AND EXPLORATION GO HAND IN HAND

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24074, 9 October 1943, Page 4

WAR AND EXPLORATION GO HAND IN HAND

DISCOVERY

Away in the wilds of Burma, in Russia, China. New Guinea, and along the shores of the Mediterranean, some very unusual explorations are going forward‘to-day. They are not planned affairs like Scott’s trip to the Pole. They happen purely by accident in the course of other and less pleasant duties, but already they have brougnt some dazzling results. I do not think I exaggerate when I say nothing quite like it has been known in history before. Entirely new parts of the world are being opened up by lorry drivers, infantrymen, ground crews, and flying officers. , „ . .. There was the case of the men of the Long Range Desert Group in the Middle East, who set out to find green vegetables since their stocks were running low. From various observations —too complicated to analyse—they had reason to believe that there might be some green stuff in the neighbourhood. On the second day of the quest, however, they had rather given up the idea of finding what they wanted. By now they were travelling through wild country liable to change its character with the drifting sand, and the weather was pretty hot. Then they caught their first sight of something unfamiliar loty down on the horizon. They made towards it and very, soon it took on the shape and outline of a pile of rock rising sharp against the skyline. They consulted their charts and maps, but the rock was not marked. They decided to push on. Gradually the wall of rock climbed higher and higher into the sxy, until at last it reached a height of about 30 feet, and still there seemed no way through this wall. It might, of course, have been just another mirage. But they felt instinctively that it wasn’t. A few minutes later they picked out a narrow cleft in the wall of rock, splitting it with one slender opening from top to toe'. They found that they could just drive their van through this cleft. Oasis Discovered

They pushed on through the narrow gorge until something startlingly beautiful opened up on the other side—a green oasis with a mauve lake at its centre. They had stumbled on an entirely new oasis. It was all faintly incredible to the tired eyes of the soldiers. This' place definitely was not marked on their. charts or maps. The country had been covered pretty thoroughly one way and another, yet nobody had stumbled on such an oasis. Still more remarkable discoveries were to come. There were Arabs living round the.oasis, who scurried into their mud huts when they heard the noise of the engines. Eventually the L.R.D.G. men managed to exchange a few words with them. Some 200 of them lived round the oasis, and only one had even seen a European before. But the thing which the' L.R.D.G. men really found difficult to believe was the.simple fact that these Arabs did not know there was a war on! It had swept round them and about them, but shut away in' their oasis they had kept their peace. . The soldiers remained some time at that oasis. The place tempted you to romanticise, to think of valleys of lost horizons and all those idylls of other days. But there was a war on. . . . These men were primarily soldiers. And even if it means surrendering other remarkable discoveries they had to get back. They Ipft shortly afterwards, and the. Arabs gave them a hearty send off. . So far as I am aware, the oasis has had no other visitors since from .the outside *world—-European visitors, that is,

2000-Mile Journeys I have given you a somewhat spectacular episode in the work of the Long Range Desert .Group, but even their normal routine jobs involved patrol and reconnaissance operations on a big scale. The Long Range Desert Group was made up of small but very mobile motor columns, each capable of working independently over a range of 2000 miles or more. They performed some, remarkable feats which gave H.Q. invaluable information about enemy dispositions and movements. On one occasion, under Major Bagnold and Lieutenant W. B. Kennedy Shaw, a unit crossed the barrier of the Great Sand Sea in Libya, thought at one time to be impassable. On another, Captain P. A. Clayton, with five. New Zealanders, reached the Italian side of the Great Sand Sea by a route which he had discovered himself,' and ’ which was known only 1 to him. He then pushed on and explored another area of entirely unknown desert. They were frequently carrying out vast treks across desert wildernesses almost empty of life. * The R.A.F. -has als*! played its part in explorations of this kind, but with

[By VINCENT ' BROME, in “London Calling."]

a different purpose in view. Sola*,.' times they wanted a new landhwjv ground, a fresh airfield site. Or petSt haps a plane had crashed in the of the jungle or away in the moun. - tains of Iceland. One R.A.F. party, for' 1 instance, went out to salvage a 'Hud. ; son and Whitley in western Iceland' not so long ago, and opened up soma' new country in the process. These men had come from ordinary civilian jobs into the Air Force, and some of them had hardly travelled at-.; all before, yet now they went off into’ ice-bound wilds, into partly uncharted ■ country, and they proved themselves, just as tough as the most seasoned ewf plorers bred and born to the the gamejv Vehicles Frozen 4; From air reconnaissance they knew ’ that the planes had crashed in an ice. i hound wilderness. Their problem was ’; how to reach them. Here are some extracts from their diary; “Extremely cold . . . water frozen inside heated-/ huts. Left camp with two Bren-guhi; carriers to act as snow-ploughs, and/' one 30cwt truck. All vehicles frozen into the sea ice where the road crosses a fjord. Personnel escaped overfrozen’- - sea with sledges. ...” Another page in the diary reads; “Proceeding alone on skis to telephone’ - ; for aid and provisions. . . . Tellphdns/ broken. . , . Food becoming short,. ;i; The telephone still broken . . . proceeding alone on horse-back. . . .” They came near to disaster at leasts twice and managed to avert it, and pushed on towards the crashed. Hud* son and Whitley. No motor-lorry could' approach the actual spot and they hadtoi.' establish food dumps a considerable ■ distance away, Then began one of their most am// bitious undertakings—climbing an ice*-;' ; bound giant which went up into the-/ clouds for 5000 feet. The mountain had : never been climbed before, ’but these R.A.F. men did not hesitate, even when • it meant clinging to a precarloui/ -system of ropes in order to edge fori/ ward foot by foot. The view from file' top was some reward at least—a griat silent world of peaks and misty vaUeyj'.and glaciers, rolling away on every/ side. i . Later, a party of soldiers joinM/ forces with them and they covered^-< even wilder country. At one pointed*,, soldiers went off alone and shortly '' afterwards the diary kept by an R.AJ-V officer recorded these words; to follow the Army. Overtook two 5 / of them struggling along with a ... At 1000 ft decided to put on sldsgfound that I had been given two leftra footed skis and became vpry angry/|/ Dug a snow hole and slept the nighp/ in it. Several storms developed bv§f*s| night. Felt anxious about Army.ln|/ camp on the mountains. Thick cldhdlS down to 500 feet. But the Armfte-. struggled in one by one having patently walked in a circle on the*: plateau until they found my ski traoksfe and followed them down.” Finally, soldiers and airmen affkeS carried out their job successfully,.amts:? returned to base without any casuf^’^ Valley of Geysers The search for emergency flying' bases in Iceland sent another partyw||

into the wilds. This time they .wira led by an intelligence officer, a forraer] president of Oxford University taineering Club. It was strange ebniS try they investigated. Here lay KerlMl garfjoll, the valley known as the bunls

ing valley, with an array of sinfl® geysers. A plane put in some recra naissance work for them and flying,) 5000 feet above the valley it'bumjfe

pretty badly from the hot air and even at that height they couldjNf smell the sulphur fumes.... The wholelß countryside had a primeval grand, aloof, swept by blizzards, HereW also was the Hekla Volcano which had-ff erupted 20 times-and, according landers, was-- due for another., soon. . . .

The men spent many days unknown slopes and at one point Were trapped by a snow-drift. They'had to * : carry out a 20-mile trek across icebound country before they reached'-' safety again. Finally. their ■ mission; proved successful. v ’ There are many more stories: like these. In New Guinea the Army and Air Force have';opened'; up some quite new country. Hie Same kind of thing is going forward ia>’ Burma. And so it goes on. . . . Everywhere,'* . on all the war fronts, exploration and. discovery go hand in hand with mih--tary, naval and aerial necessity. Many i more of the earth’s secret places may - be brought to light by the ordinary „ serving man before this war is over,