Historical
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Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
The definitive story of the British adventurers who survived the trenches of World War I and went on to risk their lives climbing Mount Everest.
On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Everest's North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain's finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a twenty-two-year-old Oxford scholar with little previous mountaineering experience. Neither of them returned.
Drawing on more than a decade of prodigious research, bestselling author and explorer Wade Davis vividly re-creates the heroic efforts of Mallory and his fellow climbers, setting their significant achievements in sweeping historical context: from Britain's nineteen-century imperial ambitions to the war that shaped Mallory's generation. Theirs was a country broken, and the Everest expeditions emerged as a powerful symbol of national redemption and hope. In Davis's rich exploration, he creates a timeless portrait of these remarkable men and their extraordinary times.
On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Everest's North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain's finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a twenty-two-year-old Oxford scholar with little previous mountaineering experience. Neither of them returned.
Drawing on more than a decade of prodigious research, bestselling author and explorer Wade Davis vividly re-creates the heroic efforts of Mallory and his fellow climbers, setting their significant achievements in sweeping historical context: from Britain's nineteen-century imperial ambitions to the war that shaped Mallory's generation. Theirs was a country broken, and the Everest expeditions emerged as a powerful symbol of national redemption and hope. In Davis's rich exploration, he creates a timeless portrait of these remarkable men and their extraordinary times.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Into the Silence:
"A kaleidoscopic account. . . . Ambitious. . . . Entertaining. . . . Extraordinary."
-The Wall Street Journal
"Brilliantly engrossing. . . . An instant classic of mountaineering literature."
-The Guardian (London)
"Magnificent. . . . Davis tells the full story behind this almost mythic story, imbuing it with historic scope and epic sweep."
-Los Angeles Times
"A masterpiece standing atop its own world, along with the classic Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer."
-Salt Lake City Tribune
"Into the Silence is quite unlike any other mountaineering book. It not only spins a gripping Boy's Own yarn about the early British expeditions to Everest, but investigates how the carnage of the trenches bled into a desire for redemption at the top of the world. . . . At its heart, Into the Silence is an elegy for a lost generation . . . a magnificent, audacious venture."
-The Sunday Times (London)
"Magnificent. . . . Impressive. . . . A vivid account."
-The Observer (London)
"Utterly compelling. . . . Not only a thorough examination of Mallory's determined advances on Everest, but also insight into the psyche of post-war England. . . . A mesmerizing story of the human spirit."
-Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"Powerful and profound, a moving, epic masterpiece of literature, history and hope."
-The Times (London)
"A brilliant book. I can't praise it enough."
-Christopher Hitchens
"Davis has produced a magnificent, rigorously researched account of the expeditions that set out to regain glory for an empire in decline but, instead, created some of the most enduring legends of the 20th century."
-Financial Times
"A magnificent work of scholarship . . . and narrative drive. . . . [Davis] has written far and away the best account of this seminal chapter in the epic history of mountaineering."
-The National
"Davis is a fine storyteller. . . . A deep current of sympathy runs through the book. ....
"A kaleidoscopic account. . . . Ambitious. . . . Entertaining. . . . Extraordinary."
-The Wall Street Journal
"Brilliantly engrossing. . . . An instant classic of mountaineering literature."
-The Guardian (London)
"Magnificent. . . . Davis tells the full story behind this almost mythic story, imbuing it with historic scope and epic sweep."
-Los Angeles Times
"A masterpiece standing atop its own world, along with the classic Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer."
-Salt Lake City Tribune
"Into the Silence is quite unlike any other mountaineering book. It not only spins a gripping Boy's Own yarn about the early British expeditions to Everest, but investigates how the carnage of the trenches bled into a desire for redemption at the top of the world. . . . At its heart, Into the Silence is an elegy for a lost generation . . . a magnificent, audacious venture."
-The Sunday Times (London)
"Magnificent. . . . Impressive. . . . A vivid account."
-The Observer (London)
"Utterly compelling. . . . Not only a thorough examination of Mallory's determined advances on Everest, but also insight into the psyche of post-war England. . . . A mesmerizing story of the human spirit."
-Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"Powerful and profound, a moving, epic masterpiece of literature, history and hope."
-The Times (London)
"A brilliant book. I can't praise it enough."
-Christopher Hitchens
"Davis has produced a magnificent, rigorously researched account of the expeditions that set out to regain glory for an empire in decline but, instead, created some of the most enduring legends of the 20th century."
-Financial Times
"A magnificent work of scholarship . . . and narrative drive. . . . [Davis] has written far and away the best account of this seminal chapter in the epic history of mountaineering."
-The National
"Davis is a fine storyteller. . . . A deep current of sympathy runs through the book. ....
Readers Top Reviews
Sourbelly Jud Guy
Wade Davis conjures up an evocative and poignant portrait of the early Mount Everest expeditions and exploration of South Eastern Tibet. Some readers are only interested in the ascent of the peak but, this misses the point completely.To understand the mountain and its hold on this generation of climbers, you only have to look at the fascinating history of the protagonists. The Great War produced these men who experienced death and destruction on an industrial scale.The Somme,Passchendale and Ypres are littered with remains of the cream of British climbing. Some of those who survived made up the majority of the expeditions. From Wakefield and the tragic Newfoundland regiment, slaughtered on the first day of the Somme. To General Bruce and the Gurkhas at Gallipoli. Mount Everest was a moment to heal the wounds of the war and put the Union Jack atop the highest point on Earth. Redemption for the Empire. Then along comes Mallory! A rather odd hero for the masses, but hero he was. He was educated at Winchester and Charterhouse, and mixed with the liberal academia of the time. The epitome of the Edwardian middle classes. But, like Wakefield, Bruce, Norton and Somervell experienced the front line during WW1. This spirit of survival and redemption oozes from every page of Mr Davis’s book.It is by far the best book ever written on the subject. His research is meticulous and his writing and interpretation of the time comes alive. My only gripe? A bit too much about Mallorys latent homosexuality.A bit like a scoop to be honest. Don’t see that part of his life having anything to do with climbing Mount Everest.
John Tower
I found this book in the bookcase of a gite in Bonnieux that my family rented in the summer of 2017. I was hooked from the first page having always had a very superficial knowledge of George Mallory and his disappearance on Everest. Sadly, a week wasn’t long enough to finish it, despite my best efforts and occasional anti-social disappearances from a family holiday to try and get another 50 pages in. Since then, I have completed it and found it utterly riveting. I appreciate that a criticism of the book is the huge amount of scene setting and background information, but I think it’s essential to understand what all these men had been through and what drove them to attempt what was basically impossible. It’s an incredibly complex web of ambition, the need to escape and the desire to stare down death all interlaced with the curiously British conflicts of class prejudice and a superiority complex along with the juxtaposition of both appreciation and disregard for ‘foreign cultures’. This is no thrill a minute ride, nor does it ever set out to be. The sheer amount of research that the author has done in order to knit the individual stories together is praiseworthy in its own right but to actually turn that into a readable book is an outstanding piece of work. Yes, you will be constantly looking back to remind yourself about all the characters involved but you need to accept that as a necessary evil to really appreciate the narrative. As a final word, let’s not forget that these men sought to get to the summit of Everest in Arron sweaters, tweed trousers and hobnail boots - and they bloody nearly made it. It is my hope that the body of Sandy Irvine will be found in my lifetime and that his camera will be there with a recoverable film in it, in order to lay any speculation to rest. Whether they made it or not is now a moot point, it’s what drove them to try that truly beggars the mind and this book lays it bare. This isn’t a book in the Into Thin Air or Touching The Void mould (and I can recommend both of those too), it’s far more of a social history slant that happens to encompass one of the greatest challenges on Earth. I cannot recommend highly enough.
J. Drew
- Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Mt. Everest, said “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” Several quotes from this remarkable book, that I also loved, include the sad quote from a woman reflecting on the horror of the war in stating that “all the men I ever danced with are dead”. - This is a remarkable masterpiece of writing about the theme that “the price of life is death” for all those who had lived through the first world war or the Great War. Wade Davis tells the story of the early exploration into Tibet by Francis Younghusband, which began the first conquest of Tibet by a European and during that duration of looking at the possibility of climbing Everest, accounts of the most horrific war run in the most idiotic way of the great war that many of these climbers survived, and of the first three attempts to conquer climb Mount Everest in 1921, 1922 and 1924. – The accounts of the First World War are remarkable, Davis has collected and researched diaries of those who climbed the mountain which include many of their accounts of war, which are truly horrific. The fact that the British generals refused to use steel helmet which would protect a man’s head much better than the cloth cap they used, refuse to use machine guns and choose rifles which shot at a much slower rate than the machine guns used by the enemy and in some of the attacks on the Germans, Allied soldiers were made to walk rather than run and rush the German trenches and were mowed down like cattle in seconds. The generals were truly incompetent but idealising british history. A couple of quotes amongst so many include the following: - “Other witnesses remember Wakefield hesitating and then slowly beginning to sob as the flag drew back to reveal the names of those who had perished: caught on the barbed wire, drowned in mud, choked by the oily slime of gas, reduced to a spray of red mist, quartered limbs hanging from shattered branches of burnt trees, bodies swollen and blackened with flies, skulls gnawed by rats, corpses stuck in the sides of trenches that aged with each day into the colours of the dead.” - “Vera Brittain, a nurse who had already lost her brother and her two best friends, and in time would lose Roland [her fiance] as well. “The dugouts have been nearly all blown in,” he wrote, the wire entanglements are a wreck, and in among the chaos of twisted iron and splintered timber and shapeless earth are the fleshless, blackened bones of simple men … Let him who thinks war is a glorious, golden thing, who loves to roll forth stirring words of exhortation, invoking honour and praise and valour and love of country … Let him but look at a little pile of sodden grey rags that cover half a skull and a shin-bone and what might have been its ribs, or at this skeleton lying on its side, resting half crouching as it fell, perfect that it is headle...
oldster81
The British made three major attempts to scale Mt. Everest in 1921,22, and 23. One of the major climbers was George Leigh Mallory, who is credited with first uttering the immortal words :"Because it is there" when asked by an American reporter why he was attempting the climb; and who ultimately became its most celebrated victim. The author Wade Davis is an anthropologist, but he has made this story his own by ten years' exhaustive research that included trips on the ground in Tibet and India following in the footsteps of these pioneering mountaineers. He is Canadian by birth, and so brings an outsider's outlook to the peculiarly British mindset that praised the values of "gentlemen" and privileged upbringing in determining who would lead British troops in the recently fought World War I and the attempt to scale Mt. Everest. The tragedy of the innumerable British lives lost in the "War to End All Wars" is constantly recounted in this story, as the author weaves in the horror-filled stories of the majority of Everest expedition members in the war, and demonstrates how those stories were intertwined with the Everest story. An exhaustive 45-page annotated bibliography at the story's conclusion is well worth a read. In it Davis lists a great many references for further reading, as well as much additional information about the actors in this saga that did not fit into the main story. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who loves mountains and respects the courage and fortitude of those who would seek to climb them. It also provides a fascinating look at some more of the problems faced - and created by the British "Raj" during its domination of India.
Bigbuffler
I felt compelled to comment on this book for several reasons, the first of which is rather humorous. I was reading well into Davis' introductions of the men involved in the 1921 efforts and was spellbound by their protean and majestic talents, their characters and achievements. While doing this, I was idly awaiting a local weather report on the TV. Changing channels, I stumbled across a nauseating daytime TV "reality show" run by some shameless instigator named Jerry Springer. Here were arrayed a collection of lower-class hippopotami, all building up to the anticipated denoument of actual physical conflict. Apparently, many of these situations involve DNA testing of some potential---or living---illegitimi. Having never seen the show before, I was half out of my chair in disbelief. In my lap was Davis' paean to these peerless English heroes of the previous century---while on the screen was the end-product (one would hope) of decades of cultural and genetic dumpster-diving. I left the TV room and chose Davis over Springer---who in their right mind would not? My forecast was for light snow---in comparison to the hurricane-born squalls and blizzards facing the pioneers of Everest, I faced few hours of shovelling. We may, if things continue to spiral down towards the lowest cultural denominator, never see the likes of a Mallory, an Irvine, a Bruce, Norton, Finch, Morshead or Somervell again. An anguisihing thought, but an unavoidable one, given the times in which we live. Reflecting on these men, I knew WW I was indeed ghastly, but it was also the forge of heroes---especially in the form these uncommon men. Both my uncle and my father served in WW I, the uncle actually a volunteer in 1915, years before his country entered the war. For that reason I knew of the squalor, despair and unavoidable fates of those entrenched. These men Davis defines for us were indeed Homeric demi-gods. It seems each of them was an accomplished scholar, indefatigable mountaineer, and a poet, musician, doctor, warrior, writer, or artist to boot. Despite the quirks and passions they displayed, each was a model of achievement, certitude and colossal gifts. My aforementioned uncle had been born in 1895 and my own father in 1899---and they were, if not mountaineers, at least exceedingly accomplished and admirable men. I deemed Davis' book a "semester course" because even its annotated bibliography is a book in itself. The amount of his research is simply Everestan, truly stupifying . I recommend it to all who want a grounding and a base-camp for further reading on the "Third Pole" as it is sometimes called. The only portion which stuck in my craw was Davis' seemingly gratuitous trashing of Americans in the party which actually discovered Mallory's body. On page 569, he accurately (and to him at least) fairly demeans the Americans by referring to their "singula...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Preface
On the morning of June 6, 1924, at a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge high above the East Rongbuk Glacier and just below the lip of Everest's North Col, expedition leader Lieutenant Colonel Edward Norton said farewell to two men about to make a final desperate attempt for the summit. At thirty-seven, George Leigh Mallory was Britain's most illustrious climber. Sandy Irvine was a young scholar of twenty- two from Oxford with little previous mountaineering experience. Time was of the essence. Though the day was clear, in the southern skies great rolling banks of clouds revealed that the monsoon had reached Bengal and would soon sweep over the Himalaya and, as one of the climbers put it, "obliterate everything." Mallory remained characteristically optimistic. In a letter home, he wrote, "We are going to sail to the top this time and God with us, or stamp to the top with the wind in our teeth."
Norton was less sanguine. "There is no doubt," he confi ded to John Noel, a veteran Himalayan explorer and the expedition's photographer, "Mallory knows he is leading a forlorn hope." Perhaps the memory of previous losses weighed on Norton's mind: seven Sherpas left dead on the mountain in 1922, two more this season, the Scottish physician Alexander Kellas buried at Kampa Dzong during the approach march and reconnaissance of 1921. Not to mention the near misses. Mallory himself, a climber of stunning grace and power, had, on Everest, already come close to death on three occasions.
Norton knew the cruel face of the mountain. From the North Col, the route to the summit follows the North Ridge, which rises dramatically in several thousand feet to fuse with the Northeast Ridge, which, in turn, leads to the peak. Just the day before, he and Howard Somervell had set out from an advanced camp on the North Ridge at 26,800 feet. Staying away from the bitter winds that sweep the Northeast Ridge, they had made an ascending traverse to reach the great couloir that clefts the North Face and falls away from the base of the summit pyramid to the Rongbuk Glacier, ten thousand feet below. Somervell gave out at 28,000 feet. Norton pushed on, shaking with cold, shivering so drastically he thought he had succumbed to malaria. Earlier that morning, climbing on black rock, he had foolishly removed his goggles. By the time he reached the couloir, he was seeing double, and it was all he could do to remain standing. Forced to turn back at 28,126 feet, less than 900 feet below the summit, he was saved by Somervell, who led him across the ice-covered slabs. On the retreat to the North Col, Somervell himself suddenly collapsed, unable to breathe. He pounded his own chest, dislodged the obstruction, and coughed up the entire lining of his throat.
By morning Norton had lost his sight, temporarily blinded by the sunlight. In excruciating pain, he contemplated Mallory's plan of attack. Instead of traversing the face to the couloir, Mallory and Irvine would make for the Northeast Ridge, where only two obstacles barred the way to the summit pyramid: a distinctive tower of black rock dubbed the First Step, and, farther along, the Second Step, a 100- foot bluff that would have to be scaled. Though concerned about Irvine's lack of experience, Norton had done nothing to alter the composition of the team. Mallory was a man possessed. A veteran of all three British expeditions, he knew Everest better than anyone alive.
Two days later, on the morning of June 8, Mallory and Irvine set out from their high camp for the summit. The bright light of dawn gave way to soft shadows as luminous banks of clouds passed over the mountain. Noel Odell, a brilliant climber in support, last saw them alive at 12:50 p.m., faintly from a rocky crag: two small objects moving up the ridge. As the mist rolled in, enveloping their memory in myth, he was the only witness. Mallory and Irvine would not be seen or heard from again. Their disappearance would haunt a nation and give rise to the greatest mystery in the history of mountaineering.
Never did Odell doubt that they reached the summit before meeting their end. Nor did he question the sublime purpose that had led them all to cross hundreds of miles on foot, from India and across Tibet, just to reach the base of the mountain. Odell wrote of his two lost friends: "My final glimpse of one, whose personality was of that charming character that endeared him to all and whose natural gifts seemed to indicate such possibilities of both mind and body, was that he was ‘going strong,' sharing with that other fi ne character who accompanied him such a vision of sublimity that it has been the lot of few mortals to behold; few while beholding have become merged into such a scene of transcendence."
CHAPTER 1
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On the morning of June 6, 1924, at a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge high above the East Rongbuk Glacier and just below the lip of Everest's North Col, expedition leader Lieutenant Colonel Edward Norton said farewell to two men about to make a final desperate attempt for the summit. At thirty-seven, George Leigh Mallory was Britain's most illustrious climber. Sandy Irvine was a young scholar of twenty- two from Oxford with little previous mountaineering experience. Time was of the essence. Though the day was clear, in the southern skies great rolling banks of clouds revealed that the monsoon had reached Bengal and would soon sweep over the Himalaya and, as one of the climbers put it, "obliterate everything." Mallory remained characteristically optimistic. In a letter home, he wrote, "We are going to sail to the top this time and God with us, or stamp to the top with the wind in our teeth."
Norton was less sanguine. "There is no doubt," he confi ded to John Noel, a veteran Himalayan explorer and the expedition's photographer, "Mallory knows he is leading a forlorn hope." Perhaps the memory of previous losses weighed on Norton's mind: seven Sherpas left dead on the mountain in 1922, two more this season, the Scottish physician Alexander Kellas buried at Kampa Dzong during the approach march and reconnaissance of 1921. Not to mention the near misses. Mallory himself, a climber of stunning grace and power, had, on Everest, already come close to death on three occasions.
Norton knew the cruel face of the mountain. From the North Col, the route to the summit follows the North Ridge, which rises dramatically in several thousand feet to fuse with the Northeast Ridge, which, in turn, leads to the peak. Just the day before, he and Howard Somervell had set out from an advanced camp on the North Ridge at 26,800 feet. Staying away from the bitter winds that sweep the Northeast Ridge, they had made an ascending traverse to reach the great couloir that clefts the North Face and falls away from the base of the summit pyramid to the Rongbuk Glacier, ten thousand feet below. Somervell gave out at 28,000 feet. Norton pushed on, shaking with cold, shivering so drastically he thought he had succumbed to malaria. Earlier that morning, climbing on black rock, he had foolishly removed his goggles. By the time he reached the couloir, he was seeing double, and it was all he could do to remain standing. Forced to turn back at 28,126 feet, less than 900 feet below the summit, he was saved by Somervell, who led him across the ice-covered slabs. On the retreat to the North Col, Somervell himself suddenly collapsed, unable to breathe. He pounded his own chest, dislodged the obstruction, and coughed up the entire lining of his throat.
By morning Norton had lost his sight, temporarily blinded by the sunlight. In excruciating pain, he contemplated Mallory's plan of attack. Instead of traversing the face to the couloir, Mallory and Irvine would make for the Northeast Ridge, where only two obstacles barred the way to the summit pyramid: a distinctive tower of black rock dubbed the First Step, and, farther along, the Second Step, a 100- foot bluff that would have to be scaled. Though concerned about Irvine's lack of experience, Norton had done nothing to alter the composition of the team. Mallory was a man possessed. A veteran of all three British expeditions, he knew Everest better than anyone alive.
Two days later, on the morning of June 8, Mallory and Irvine set out from their high camp for the summit. The bright light of dawn gave way to soft shadows as luminous banks of clouds passed over the mountain. Noel Odell, a brilliant climber in support, last saw them alive at 12:50 p.m., faintly from a rocky crag: two small objects moving up the ridge. As the mist rolled in, enveloping their memory in myth, he was the only witness. Mallory and Irvine would not be seen or heard from again. Their disappearance would haunt a nation and give rise to the greatest mystery in the history of mountaineering.
Never did Odell doubt that they reached the summit before meeting their end. Nor did he question the sublime purpose that had led them all to cross hundreds of miles on foot, from India and across Tibet, just to reach the base of the mountain. Odell wrote of his two lost friends: "My final glimpse of one, whose personality was of that charming character that endeared him to all and whose natural gifts seemed to indicate such possibilities of both mind and body, was that he was ‘going strong,' sharing with that other fi ne character who accompanied him such a vision of sublimity that it has been the lot of few mortals to behold; few while beholding have become merged into such a scene of transcendence."
CHAPTER 1
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