If buying goods in the 70’s made by the Japanese was simply a ‘no, no’ for my father, climbing with them would have been unthinkable. Not because of any inherent belief their goods were of poor quality nor their ability as climbers but simply that, as a young Sergeant in the Royal Artillery leading an Indian AckAck battery, who played their part defending the backs of The Chindits as they tore after the Japs in Burma, he saw firsthand the utter depravity and insane human suffering inflicted on Allied prisoners. His self-imposed ban was purely personal.
So, having survived the war and along with many thousands, he arrived back in Blighty in late 1945 to find a country which had nearly forgotten that VE day was only part of the WWII picture. Like the majority of returnees, my dad simply de-mobbed and went to work in civvy street a few days later: with no attention paid to any tightly held feelings, fears and nightmares of those who had fought in every theatre of war, including the relentless, dripping humidity of Burmese jungle. We now understand these reactions as serious evidence of PTSD but in those days, volunteers and conscripts simply stiffened their sinews and were expected to ‘get on with it’.
Is it no wonder that my dad had an understandable pretext for avoiding anything remotely connected with a country whose soldiers had shattered and scarred the lives of those whose lucky stars, like him, had brought them home?
So, imagine what feelings and possibly regurgitation of horror he might have had in 1954 (0nly 9 years after VJ Day), when, arriving at the Flualp Hut, above Zermatt in the Valais alps, geared up and adorned with photographic equipment, Robin finds he is in a room only a few feet from two Japanese climbers who were as welcome in Switzerland as any other nationality.
Wartime neutrality gave the Swiss a headstart in 1945 to re-establish a new normal: especially amongst the alps, where race, creed and colour had little relevance. Unless you were at the Berliner Hutte in The Zillertal, where in 1988, I and a few from OMC, were locked into the main restaurant, just after the bulk of the huts guests had headed for bed, to witness a table of men, who stripped-off their breeches and jackets to reveal lederhosen adorned with Nazi regalia and started singing with fervent vigour a set of German Nationalist songs. But that’s another story.
Back in the Flualp hut and Robin had met with his Guide, Sigismund Perren of Zermatt, with the intention of climbing Rimpfischhorn SW Ridge. While we’re on ‘other stories’, I have met with the nephew of Sigismund and heard about a family split and how, I think, it was Sigismund’s brother who was taken up The Matterhorn by his fellow Guides for his 90th birthday.
Anyhow, Robin summited with his Guide and then the pair went on to climb Monte Rosa but as an emotionally ignorant teenager in the 70’s, none of my dad’s attempts to share this and other climbing stories connected with me, even though, privately, I was smitten by everything mountaineering. With his attempts to foster my interest shunned and his Edwardian upbringing in control, he didn’t know how to bridge our gap: even to the point of my dad simply shaking my hand as he left me for my last year at school.
Robin retired in 1975 and his health took a downturn which led to his death from Liver cancer kiboshing any chance of this young man to kindle even a figment of adult bonding with him. We had had a chance when my intended career as a Royal Marine Commando ended abruptly during training. Back at home, after my unceremonial demobbing, his unstinting support gave me a second start on adulthood and what has become my lifelong love in outdoor and adventure but I wasn’t emotionally awake enough to see how his end-of-life would soon sever everything but memories.
My shell of arrogance didn’t let me make moves towards anything deep with my dad…and now, at 64, my sorrow, regret and desperate wish to give him just one last hug of appreciation and to tell him for the first time how I love him, still burns as tears course down my cheeks even as I write this.
Little did I know that somewhere lodged in the ‘must do’ notebook of my mind lay a desire to climb my dad’s mountains and yet the clue had been on my bedside table since he died in 1982.
From one of his 35mm slides he used in his lectures on behalf of The Royal Photographic Society, I had printed a photo of Dad sitting beside the cross on the Rimpfischhorn with the Briethorn, Castor and Pollux as his background. He looks peaceful and maybe satisfied that he was ready for Monte Rosa. Until recently, I had rarely taken a close interest in it. But that’s how life’s coincidences happen, isn’t it?
Life’s coincidences often emerge from nowhere and we’re frequently gobsmacked when an image, smell, song, card, letter, ornament or even a place we visit on a mundane trip suddenly reveal themselves from under our nose and become a magical inspiration.
So too, when I spoke with Jere Scott about one of the trips he made with Ted Tombling: the photograph of my Dad, suddenly had new meaning and a heartfelt drive to climb the Rimpfischhorn became my next adventure.
Arriving at The Flualp Hut, the Hut management were only too keen to help me. After much enthusiastic searching amongst the dust adorned hut books on a seriously high shelf above the guests’ dining tables, they found the hut book for 1954. The pages had survived virtually untouched over 56 alpine winters and hadn’t even turned yellow as the heavy, thick, leather-bound covers had protected the contents like huge eves and as we slowly turned pages towards July, my Dad’s writing eventually stared back at me. (note to Ed: insert image of Hut book here?)
Nothing could help me as tears streamed but quickly, I backed-off to prevent them from dripping onto the book. Somehow, I took a few photographs without shaking the images and with a very comforting hand on my shoulder, Jere stood beside me…not saying a word!
The story of our climb is much the same as for the many who’ve summited and, apart from the mists obscuring the hill until the last few hundred feet and the arrogance of a roped party of 5 who were in descent, there’s little of note. As the men stamped in descent towards the crux moves, I was already committed in ascent to the mantle-shelf onto a big block marking the end of difficulties. Mind you, when one crampon bit my hand, accompanied by a Germanic-toned voice ordering me to get out of the wearer’s way, an international incident was avoided as Jere was thankfully on my rope behind me. My swearing from pain and anger was met with the typical arrogance of numbers as they shouted back, leaving us livid but resigned to our misfortune.
Roll forward to 2022 and I’m back in the Valais, this time above Saas Fee climbing the new VF from the Britannia Hut. A narrow, contouring path onto the Three Glaciers route to Satausee Mattmark, takes rung-pullers to the start. It has a few gorgeous spots of the path which provide panoramic viewpoints for those not venturing onto the boulder-strewn Grey ice of the Hohlaubgletscher or those, like me, ascending the Hinter Allalin (3250m) and its iron stapples. Once finished my race up the ironwork, across some seriously exposed and overhanging ground, I was ready for a wee sit down in one of the scenic viewpoints.
Now, when we talk of occurrences and incidents sometimes having an inexplicable sense of coincidence, I couldn’t believe what was happening as the clouds opened my vista to the South. There, as if floating above the Allaningletscher behind the Allaninhorn, was the Rimpfischorn with its finger-like North ridge pointing at the summit. As I had climbed it from the West and in mist until the ridge, I had never seen the hill so close-up and in such a beautiful pose.
…and did those tears pour out.
I howled. I sobbed. I cried like I’d never cried before. At Dad’s funeral, I thought I had to stay composed for my mum yet inside I was shaking with an uncontrollable urge to let go but then, I was, still, that unshakeable, arrogant young man who hadn’t spoken closely with his dad. My burning tears, 38 years later, were a mixture of guilt and sorrow for my 20 year old’s behaviour and the loss I now recognised. I yearned to speak to my dad; wanted to hug him one last time, thank him for what he’d given me and praise him for what he’d achieved as a mountaineer in the 1950’s.
I know what I’d think and feel if my daughters were ever to find it too difficult to talk to me. So, I can only imagine how my dad might have felt; unaware he was trapped inside a stoic, behavioural code which didn’t allow men to show their feelings.
I will climb Monte Rosa; to connect once more through the mountains with my dad. And, ‘yes’, I will let the good tears will roll.
Footnote:
the title phrase, 'let the good tears roll' is taken from Joe Bonamassa's 'Let The Good Times Roll'
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