Annapurna (2 page)

Herzog speaks the language of an honest man, unashamed of his weakness and his mistakes, quick to praise his friends and never one for vainglory. It is this integrity that lends his words such evocative power. He writes of the mountains with affection and passion, never with bitterness or any sense that he has been harshly treated. They are to him, as they have become for me, sources of wonder, of life-enhancing moments when the borders between living and dying seem to overlap, when the past and the future cease to exist and you are free.

His account – including the grisly descriptions of casual amputations towards the end – has the uplifting effect of proving that it is possible to win against all the odds if you just keep trying. It is a lesson well worth remembering. If one of the team had perished, this positive note would instantly have been erased. The fact that they suffered so cruelly for their summit seems to add to the heroic scale of their triumph rather than detract from it.

The mountains often provide life-changing experiences, unforgettable in the vivid lucidity with which they are later recalled,
sometimes
crushing in the agony and grief they can impose. Perhaps the most vivid moments in this book occur when on the summit Herzog thinks to himself, ‘How wonderful life would now become! What an inconceivable experience it is to attain one’s ideal and, at the very same moment, to fulfil oneself. I was stirred to the depths of my being. Never had I felt happiness like this – so intense and yet so pure.’ Within an hour of starting the descent he was to be plunged into despair as he watched his gloves tumble out of his reach. ‘The movement of those gloves was engraved in my sight as something ineluctable, irremediable, against which I was powerless.’ Mountains have a stunning beauty, a coldly savage addictive quality that is difficult to resist and dangerous to ignore.

For tense high drama, shattering emotional impact and compelling readability, I know of few other books to compare with Maurice Herzog’s
Annapurna
. It is an inspirational read for people of all ages, whether mountaineers or not.

Joe Simpson

Sheffield, July 1996

Foreword

The whole of this book has been dictated at the American Hospital at Neuilly where I am still having rather a bad time.

The basis of the narrative is, of course, my memory of all that happened. In so far as the record is comprehensive and exact, that is due to the Expedition’s log which Marcel Ichac so faithfully kept – an essential document, sometimes written up at the very moment of action. Louis Lachenal’s private journal, and the details supplied by all my friends, have been of the greatest possible use. So this book is the work of the whole party.

The text, often colloquial in style, has been revised and put into shape by my brother Gerard Herzog, the sharer of my earliest mountain pleasures, as indeed of my earliest experiences of life. If it had not been for the confidence I had in his rendering, and for the encouragement he gave me day by day, I doubt if I should ever have been able to finish my task.

The name of Robert Boyer, who did so much for our Expedition, does not figure in this record and yet his understanding friendship was a tonic in my darkest hours.

This is the first time I have written a book; I never realized before what a long business it was. Sometimes the job was almost too much for me, but I have undertaken it because I wanted to set down, on behalf of all those who went with me, the story of a terrible adventure which we survived only by what still seems to me an incredible series of miracles.

The following pages record the actions of men at grips with Nature at her most pitiless, and tell of their sufferings, hopes and joys.

As I conceived to be my duty, I have given a plain truthful account of what happened, and have tried – so far as lay within my powers – to bring out its human aspect, and convey the extraordinary psychological atmosphere in which everything took place.

All the nine members of the Expedition will have more than one
reason
for cherishing this record. Together we knew toil, joy and pain. My fervent wish is that the nine of us who were united in face of death should remain fraternally united for life.

In overstepping our limitations, in touching the extreme boundaries of man’s world, we have come to know something of its true splendour. In my worst moments of anguish I seemed to discover the deep significance of existence of which till then I had been unaware. I saw that it was better to be true than to be strong. The marks of the ordeal are apparent on my body. I was saved and I had won my freedom. This freedom, which I shall never lose, has given me the assurance and serenity of a man who has fulfilled himself. It has given me the rare joy of loving that which I used to despise. A new and splendid life has opened out before me.

In this narrative we do more than record our adventures, we bear witness: events that seem to make no sense may sometimes have a deep significance of their own. There is no other justification for an
acte gratuit
.

Hôpital Américain de Paris

June 1951

Preface

The conquest of Annapurna has stirred up general interest which is still increasing. It was, beyond all question, one of the greatest adventures of our times, and most nobly carried out
.

Maurice Herzog and his companions have crowned a long series of attempts and successes, by climbing not only the highest summit yet attained by man, but also the first summit of over 8000 metres, the first to be climbed of the very highest mountains of the world
.

With this victory, achieved at a first attempt and in an unknown region, they have succeeded in an enterprise which the most experienced Himalayan travellers had considered impossible. That outstanding English climber, the late Frank Smythe, who had been on five Himalayan expeditions, had conquered Mount Kamet and had attained the highest point (8500 metres) reached on Everest, had declared that ‘Mountaineering in the Himalaya presents such difficulties that, as far as one can see, no expedition will ever succeed in climbing one of the twelve highest peaks at a first attempt
.’

This, however, is exactly what the Annapurna Expedition of 1950 achieved
.

Victory in the Himalaya is a collective victory, for the party as a whole. Every member of the expedition, each in his place, whether more or less favoured by circumstances, has been worthy of the trust placed in him; one and all carried out with unswerving devotion their duty of bringing the two injured climbers safely down. We give them in full measure the gratitude they have so richly earned; but at the same time we realize that the victory of the whole party was also, and above all, the victory of its leader
.

The other members of the party have been the first to confirm the wisdom of our choice of a leader by the affection, and even reverence, in which they hold him. But it was not the Himalaya that revealed Maurice Herzog to us, for his past record had convinced us that we had entrusted the Expedition to the most valiant of them all. The Himalaya did, however, provide him with the opportunity – ultimately, alas, in the most appalling circumstances – to be the very soul of a great adventure, and this he accomplished in the most moving and magnificent way
.

What a range of gifts he has shown! His intelligence and character opened many fields of activity to him. His grasp of the practical side of life debarred
him
neither from the poetry of Mallarmé nor from the Pensées of Pascal. He was as much at home in a city office as on one of the great Italian ridges of Mont Blanc. His great goodness of heart, which won him so many friends, did not prevent him from taking firm decisions, when necessary, or forming a clear-sighted judgment of people. A level head controlled the natural exuberance of an abounding vitality
.

The facts speak for themselves. His remarkable physical fitness throughout the Expedition, which surpassed even that of Lionel Terray and Louis Lachenal, ‘the two steam-engines’, considered by all to be in a class by themselves, was the reflection of his will and of the faith in victory which he inspired in everybody, even in all of us at home, so many thousands of miles away
.

Spending himself to the limit, reserving for himself the hardest tasks, deriving his authority from the example he set, always in the vanguard, he made victory possible. That last long stage to the top bears the stamp of his judgment and determination. The natural thing would have been to establish a sixth camp, but Maurice had the vision to realize that one more day spent on the climb might cost them the summit, and so he decided to make an all-out dash
.

All France knows the price that had to be paid. And Maurice faced his ordeal with a resolution and courage perhaps even more admirable than that he displayed on the climb. He showed an utter disregard of self. It was typical of him that, as they emerged from the crevasse where they had bivouacked, his first thought should be for the others, and his first words a request that they should leave him behind, and increase their own chances of safety
.

The endless return march in the monsoon rains, the succession of amputations, the long months of immobility and their accompaniment of pain – from all these he has emerged at last, standing on his own feet again, with a heightened simplicity and moral sensibility, as though purified by fire. It is with a sense of wonder and fulfilment that we see him turning again towards life as towards renewal, seeing more good in it because he himself is a better man
.

And this book which we now hold in our hands is a triumph without parallel, a triumph of the heart and of the creative understanding. It is not like any other book. It reads like a novel, but it is truth itself, truth almost too elusive to grasp or to express. Its easy familiar tone, its straight-forward presentation of people and events, give it a striking authenticity. For the first time, we are all members of a Himalayan expedition, we are all present beside the leader and the rest of the party. You are taking us with you, too, my dear Maurice,
to
the very end – to the end of the ordeal, to the end of an almost unbelievable experience
.

It is impossible to read these pages without being overwhelmed by the sensitive awareness, and the kindliness, that went with so much courage and such dogged determination
.

Thank you for being so well aware that one can put aside modesty without becoming vain. If it were not so, then every advance of the spirit would go unrecorded. It takes courage to draw the veil from those moments when the individual approaches most nearly to the universal
.

That wonderful world of high mountains, dazzling in their rock and ice, acts as a catalyst. It suggests the infinite, but it is not the infinite. The heights only give us what we ourselves bring to them. Climbing is a means of self-expression. Its justification lies in the men it develops, its heroes and its saints. This was the essential truth which a whole nation grasped when it offered its praise and admiration to the conquerors of Annapurna. Man overcomes himself, affirms himself, and realizes himself in the struggle towards the summit, towards the absolute. In the extreme tension of the struggle, on the frontier of death, the universe disappears and drops away beneath us. Space, time, fear, suffering, no longer exist. Everything then becomes quite simple. As on the crest of a wave, or in the heart of a cyclone, we are strangely calm – not the calm of emptiness, but the heart of action itself. Then we know with absolute certainty that there is something indestructible in us, against which nothing shall prevail
.

A flame so kindled can never be extinguished. When we have lost everything it is then we find ourselves most rich. Was it this certainty that all was well that gave Maurice Herzog the steady courage to endure his ordeal?

The summit is at our feet. Above the sea of golden clouds other summits pierce the blue and the horizon extends to infinity
.

The summit we have reached is no longer the Summit. The fulfilment of oneself – is that the true end, the final answer?

LUCIEN DEVIES

Président du Comité de l’Himalaya

et de la Fédération Française de la Montagne

1

Preparations

THE DAY FIXED
for our departure was close at hand. Should we ever manage to get everything done? The entire personnel of the French Alpine Club was mobilized. The lights burned late into the night at No 7 rue La Boétie; there was a tremendous sense of excitement, and the Himalayan Committee sat nearly every evening. At nine o’clock, punctual to the minute, these people, upon whom at this stage the fate of the Expedition depended, would arrive, and vital decisions were taken at their secret councils: it is the Committee which settles the budget, foresees contingencies, weighs up the risk and, finally, chooses the members of the expedition.

The names of the members of the party had been known for a few days. I was to have a splendid team. The youngest member was the tall and aristocratic Jean Couzy, aged 27; he had been a brilliant student at the École Polytechnique and was now an aeronautical engineer. He had not long been married but had not hesitated to leave his young wife, Lise. A quiet man, with a faraway look in his eyes, he always seemed to be turning over in his mind the latest problems of electronics.

Couzy’s usual climbing partner, Marcel Schatz, was going with us too. He was two years older than his friend, of a heavier build, and always well turned out, for the very good reason that he was manager of one of his father’s prosperous tailoring establishments. He liked efficient organization, order and method. Whenever a bivouac was needed on a climb he was always the one to set to and get it ready. As he was unmarried, and an ardent climber, there was nothing to prevent him from spending all his holidays in the mountains; although he lived in Paris, and so at some distance from his paradise, he was rarely to be found in town at week-ends.