In New Zealand they learn that Roald Amundsen has reached the Pole first. Returning to Antarctica in early 1913, they discover that Scott’s party, including Scotsman Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers, reached the Pole but died on the ice shelf. Back in Britain memorial services, medal ceremonies, weddings and resumed careers are abruptly interrupted by the First World War. Fit and able men, Scott’s ‘Antarctics’ trade one adventure for another. 

 

Over the next five years they fight at Antwerp, on the Western Front and Gallipoli, in the Channel, at Jutland and in 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 and poet Rupert Brooke. As in Antarctica, life is challenging and dangerous – four more expedition members die and others are badly injured. But the bonds forged during the expedition survive and in post-war Britain they work to establish the Scott Polar Research Institute as a memorial to those who died on the Antarctic ice-shelf. 

 

In May 1922 J. M. Barrie, a close friend of Scott and godson to the explorer’s son Peter (named after Peter Pan) is installed as Rector of St Andrews. One of those Barrie nominated for an honorary degree was Bernard Freyberg, V.C., a young New Zealander Barrie met through Edward Nelson, a marine biologist on Scott’s expedition who had joined the Royal Naval Division at the same time as Freyberg. 

 

During his address on ‘Courage’, Barrie pulled from his pocket and quoted from a letter Scott had written to him shortly before his death on the Antarctic ice-shelf. Barrie, citing Scott and Freyberg as examples of courage, urged his young listeners to follow their example and look to the future with hope. Praise for From Ice Floes to Battlefields from Dr David M. Wilson, author of The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott and Edward Wilson’s Antarctic Notebooks: ‘These meticulously researched networks of adventure, from the Antarctic to the Somme and Spitsbergen, endow the stories of Scott, Shackleton and their famous ‘Antarctics’ with sparkling-fresh insight.’ 

 

 Anne Strathie became a full-time writer following a career in the business, arts and heritage sectors. Whilst researching for Birdie Bowers: Captain Scott’s Marvel (2012) and From Ice Floes to Battlefields (2015) she travelled to Antarctica, New Zealand and First World War sites and consulted archives all over the world, including at St Andrews. Anne, who has given talks on Bowers, the Terra Nova expedition and related subjects in Britain and overseas, also co-authored Hugh Willoughby: The Man Who Loved Picassos (2008).