From Ice Floes to Battlefields: Scott's 'Antarctics' in the First World War

by Anne Strathie

February 1912: Harry Pennell and his Terra Nova shipmates land on Antarctica hoping to celebrate Scott's conquest of the Pole. Forced by ice to leave before Scott returns, they arrive in New Zealand to find that Amundsen reached the Pole in December 1911. Back in Antarctica in January 1913, they learn Scott and his party died on the return journey. Pennell and his fellow 'Antarctics' return to Britain, where a cycle of medal ceremonies and memorial services is interrupted by the outbreak of war. By 1919 Pennell and his friends have served at Antwerp, on the Western Front, at Gallipoli, in the Channel, at Jutland and Arctic Russia. They serve on horseback, in trenches, on battleships and hospital ships, in armoured cars and flimsy aircraft; their brothers-in-arms include a Prime Minister's son, poet Rupert Brooke (who takes a photograph of one of them) and the creator of a famous Cotswolds garden. As in Antarctica, life is exciting but dangerous. As on the ice, not all Scott's 'Antarctics' survive.

Genres: War, Nonfiction, History

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Fred Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book illustrating the lives of the folks on the Terra Nova and their service in WWI.

[Yafen Shen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A trove of delightful inside information that was new to me. Unfortunately when the author relies solely on her memory and simply "knows" an item to be true, she makes more a few factual errors. One of the more exasperating, particularly as the assertion is made repeatedly, is Cherry-Garrard's being referred to as a trained biologist with a degree in that field (the Oxford educated Cherry-Garrard, Wilson's "adaptable helper", read Modern History and Classics).
Happily, all the "good stuff" is fully sourced. Those with a solid grounding in the subject, and thus unlikely to be misinformed by the author's occasional small slip, will find this book most worthwhile.

[Stephen Hackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fascinating information about the post-Antarctic lives and careers of members of Scott's 'Terra Nova' expedition. In particular, Strathie discusses their participation in the First World War - in which several of them died, and many served with distinction in fields as far-flung as Gallipoli, Murmansk and the Western Front.

However, the whole is somehow less than the sum of its - albeit interesting - parts, as the author tries to marshal a narrative with dozens of disparate characters over the period of a decade. To be fair, I am not sure it would have been possible, given the source material, to have pulled it together much more tightly.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was as emotionless as a bullet-pointed timeline. There was no depth of information--too many names and only surface-scratching details. Subject matter transitions within chapters were sloppy, if existent at all. And there were several typos! The editor did no favors for this author.