100 Years Ago.

100 Years ago today Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Dr Wilson and Mr Bowers collected 5 Emperor Penguin eggs from Cape Crozier in Antarctica.They had been travelling since 27th June, in the Antarctic Winter. Famously, this involves zero sunlight and epic cold.

These are the men and this is the journey I admire more than anything. They made the journey in the dark. Conditions no one could have expected. Lost their tent. Slept in the snow and ice. Frozen sleeping bags. Found their tent. Frostbite blisters, which then froze. Frozen. Blisters. The liquid inside the blisters. Frozen solid. To collect some eggs, in the fine & noble name of Science.

Cherry wrote of day 100 years ago:
'I have heard tell of an English officer at the Dardanelles who was left, blinded, in No Man's Land between the English and Turkish trenches. Moving only at night, and having no sense to tell him which were his own trenches, he was fired at by Turk and English alike as he groped his ghastly way to and from them. Thus he spent days and nights until, one night, he crawled towards the English trenches, to be fired at as usual. "Oh God! what can I do!" some one heard him say, and he was brought in.
 
Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give relief. But this I know: we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend. As we groped our way back that night, sleepless, icy, and dog-tired in the dark and the wind and the drift, a crevasse seemed almost a friendly gift.

"Things must improve," said Bill next day, "I think we reached bed-rock last night." We hadn't, by a long way.'

........................ I'm sorry what was that you were saying about your day being rubbish?

 Brothers I salute you.