1911 Review of the Year

'1911. The year of revolution in China

'and trigger-happy anarchists in London.

'The year the aeroplane changed history with the first airmail delivery

'and the world's first aerial bombing.

'And a year of discovery. In Marie Curie's laboratory in Paris

'and the blizzard-torn wastes of the South Pole.

'Today, we hear from the people who lived through history.

'They bear witness to an extraordinary year

'that shaped the modern world.

'As the year turns, the US cavalry

'are sent to secure the Rio Grande in the Mexican Revolution.

'America needs stability on her borders

'and she's determined to get it.'

There was a banging on the window.

We sleep on the ground floor.

And Sammy, my husband Samuel, he thought it was the milkman.

So he was shouting, "Not today! Not today!"

And then they kept on knocking. So I pushed open the window.

And there were all these coppers standing there in the dark.

This copper, he asked us who lives in the house.

It's our house. Sammy has his own tailor's workshop in the attic

and we let rooms out to the Clemers, the Shermans and Mrs Goujon.

He wanted me to go in Mrs Goujon's room and see if there was men there.

I said it was none of my business and none of his.

The coppers turned nasty.

"How long have you been in England? You could be aiding or abetting."

I was furious! Blackening our name!

The Fleishmans are well respected around here.

That's when I found out what was going on.

He said the men that killed those coppers were in my house upstairs.

The coppers had guns.

I didn't say anything.

I just got my children out of there as quick as I could.

I couldn't see much from next door, but I could hear the shots

and then I saw the copper go down.

I could see blood all over the cobbles.

I kept on hoping it would stop, but the gunmen kept on firing back.

There was a load of people gawping. Toffs, too.

I could see a man standing on the corner with a contraption.

Someone said it was a movie camera.

I could even hear a barrel organ with someone hawking hot chestnuts.

I thought the soldiers might finish it.

But I didn't see them make much difference.

This big, black car drives up. The coppers push the crowd aside and let it through.

And a man in a top hat gets out.

I didn't recognise him. Would you?

I never saw the coppers talk to the gunmen. They didn't have a megaphone.

They never shouted, "Give yourselves up or wave your white flag". Nothing.

It was about midday when Samuel saw the smoke.

Our house was on fire.

The police came in, said the fire was spreading and we needed to make a dash for it.

I've never run so fast in my life.

Then they pushed us into this crowd and they just left us there.

My home was in flames

and everyone just stood watching.

Wicked.

Our life was in that house.

The only photograph I had of my father.

Rachel's first pair of baby shoes.

All destroyed. And the coppers did nothing.

Nothing about it.

I thought it started to rain.

But they'd put the hoses on.

I saw Churchill.

He was as close to me as you are now.

He seemed to me like he was having a fine old time.

Then the firemen started to clear the house.

They just threw things onto the pavement.

Our bed, Rachel's cradle, our tin bath.

We lost Samuel's business, too.

And £900 worth of damage.

I've got it all itemised here.

That's all we're asking for.

Just some compensation.

I can't believe it.

I still can't believe it.

'These horses have an important job to do.

'And the Army make sure they're in tip-top condition.

'Men and horses have to be battle-ready.

'Watch out, Dobbin, that bank takes a bit of muscle power!

'And he's over. And ready to fight another day.

'After ten years of recession and falling wages,

'workers across Britain have had enough.

'In Glasgow, a strike threatens the mighty Singer factory.'

I've worked in this factory nearly all my life.

But I've never seen inside that room.

I've seen people come out of it, though.

They look smaller.

It's my turn now.

Look at this.

It takes 41 pairs of hands just to make one.

You know, these things can go twice the speed of the best seamstress.

Nice, straight lines they make, too.

But the best stories are hand-stitched.

'I remember when this place was nothing but grass.

'Mammy took me here.

'There was no black dust then. No noise.

'Now the whole town comes this way.

'Cramming in before the 7:00am bell.

'The foreman, we call him Crippen,

'he's always on the lookout for stragglers.

'I work on the needles.

'Just one cog in a machine of 12,000.

'They wanted us to work harder, longer, for less.'

The women always catch it worse.

They chucked three girls out of the polishing.

Told the rest to take the slack.

It was all the same to them. But for us, that was the start.

Nancy shouted, "Polishers are out!"

I rushed to the window, and right enough.

Only 12 of them.

Made me think of David and Goliath.

Except David never wore a pinny.

That's when I felt the needle go right through.

Other folk felt it too.

The men came down and stood next to us.

Strange to see them mix in with us,

but we turned 12 into 10,000.

10,000 workers side by side, you'd never seen anything like it.

There were reporters down every day.

They took our pictures for the paper.

I put it next to Mammy's bed for her.

The whole world was watching.

He's in just now.

Critten.

Spinning tales about me.

The boss has been asking who he reckons are "fiery customers".

In the park, I jumped on the lorry. Couldn't help myself.

Started leading the chants.

Me mammy always tells me off for shouting,

says I've got a foghorn for a mouth.

That's not a bad thing when you've got 1,000 faces staring at you.

Aye, see, on a bitter cold morning out there,

it's a great thing to be fiery.

We were like an army at dawn.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but I thought I saw a wee spark in us.

A flame of hope, of unity.

The bosses had to listen. They HAD to see us now.

We felt like we had marched to America, to Singer himself.

Nothing.

Silence.

They refused to talk to us.

We couldn't work out if they were cowards or canny.

On the 4th April, we got an answer.

Not everybody got one.

"It would've been useless to send to everyone," they said.

They were addressed to "The former employees of the Singer Manufacturing Company".

"Former"

This isn't a letter. It's a threat.

To put you in your place, like the clocks and Crippen in that room.

To rob your pride, make you foolish,

"What are you going to do without work, an old spinster like you?" That's what this says.

Shame you don't have a man to look after you and your crippled mammy.

Sad, that.

Shame you'll be forced into sweatshops, the two of you,

to earn a crust between you.

We all thought about what we could lose.

-The letter poisoned us.

-BABIES CRY, CHILDREN LAUGH

They needed 6,000 signatures to get the Singer machine going again.

Well, they weren't getting mine.

But what about the others?

See, if I'm a single thread, you can break me easy.

But a thread with hundreds more, or thousands,

all entwined together,

then I'm as strong as old rope.

Course, you'd be daft if you thought they'd play fair.

Ballots started to turn up everywhere.

People who hadn't worked at the factory for years.

Some for many more years than that.

WIND BLOWS

Others got more than one ballot, some got none at all.

It was the first time I'd ever voted.

Like the rest of the women, we'd waited a long time.

But, it was a fix.

They'd stolen our voices -

6,527 of them.

There were no words when the strike ended. Just blank faces.

A big turnout, but all I could hear was the wind in the trees.

Made me think of a funeral.

You know that feeling, that gnawing at the pit of your stomach?

That dryness in your mouth?

That's failure.

I thought I was a strong woman.

I chose work over love.

Wages instead of family.

To stand for myself.

To stand for everyone.

So, what did we end up with?

A bad living made worse?

Working under bullies

if you're lucky...

Why tell this story?

To show us how hope dies.

But, no...

Do you see it?

Is it a trick of the light?

We know now, what's been denied us.

< Jane Rae?

We'll remember.

Pierre Prier is the first man to fly non-stop from London to Paris.

Just look at this beauty. It only took him three hours 56 minutes.

So plenty of time to get to the Champs-Elysees for a spot of lunch.

Up and down the country, families struggle to fill in the census.

Except for the Suffragettes who boycott the form.

"Why should the man always be head of the household?" They say.

And when all the paperwork's complete, what do we learn?

Well, among other things, that there are 45,307,530 of us in these islands -

give or take the odd Suffragette.

And one in seven of us is a domestic servant.

At 26,000 tonnes, this ship is the biggest object ever moved by man

and a triumph of modern technology.

It takes 22 tonnes of tallow and soap

just to smooth her passage down the slipway in Belfast.

They name her the Titanic.

The country comes together in a day of national celebration.

George V is crowned in Westminster Abbey,

with all the pomp and ceremony such an occasion demands.

Temperatures soar to 92 degrees

as Britain faces the warmest summer on record.

These city children know how to keep cool.

But for the rest of us, it's just too hot for comfort.

Unrest among the workers continues through the long, hot summer,

exploding into violence in Liverpool

as Police and Army are sent to break a transport strike.

Across the Channel, the Mona Lisa goes missing

and the whole of Paris plays cherchez la femme.

I arrived early, ahead of the public who are not admitted until nine.

You see, as a professional artist. I have an official dispensation.

I made my way to my usual spot in the salon and greeted Frederick.

But SHE wasn't there.

We stared at the empty space on the wall.

This was a nuisance.

Fred was supposed to be working on an engraving and I had my painting,

but without our subject...

I left my materials and went to find that buffoon of a guard.

He said, he thought she was probably in the photography studio, as was often the case.

But after an hour, she still wasn't back.

And I was getting more and more impatient.

The guard sent someone to find out what had happened.

And shortly afterwards, people started rushing about,

backwards and forwards.

The normal hush of the museum was replaced

with a great deal of calamity.

And I knew then something really strange had happened.

Ready?

SHUTTER CLICKS

Most people thought that somebody had taken the painting

to be photographed. This was the early days of photography.

Or taken it for conservation work.

Or perhaps they were just cleaning the room.

So everybody thought somebody else had taken it,

which is why they were so blind to this missing painting.

The Undersecretary for Fine Arts in France,

just before leaving Paris on holiday

had said, "Don't call me unless the Louvre burns down

"or the Mona Lisa gets stolen."

Of course, when he heard the news, he thought it was a joke.

When the Mona Lisa went missing, it was like a person had disappeared.

And the Police's instinct, rather amazingly, a mug-shot - a photograph of the Mona Lisa.

6,500 copies were released to the streets of Paris.

It was glued on walls and so on.

And it went right across the world.

Her photograph appeared on the front pages.

She had centrefolds. She was in every nation.

And since arriving from France,

they were afraid that the painting was already taken abroad.

She was in Russia, Australia, Canada, America - everywhere.

And that is how she came to be so familiar to us now.

She was a global edition.

When the news of the disappearance of the Mona Lisa broke out,

the world realised how poor was the security inside the Louvre Museum.

A few years ago, a man hid overnight in an Egyptian sarcophagus.

You know what, not one person noticed.

No-one.

The guards here are appointed by the Ministry of War,

you'd think they know something about security.

What a joke.

Those decrepit old soldiers couldn't catch a cold, never mind a thief.

A week after the Mona Lisa disappeared, the museum reopened,

after the boss had been fired and everyone had been given a reprimand

and after the police had piled in and piled out.

They opened again and they opened now, with a gap.

It was a very strange thing to see all these people

staring at a black space with the four nails!

To me, it seems like the first example of conceptual art.

The exhibition of the absence of the masterpiece.

We also know that Kafka, for example, visited the museum

and was quite amused by this craze for the famous four nails of the Mona Lisa.

Before the Mona Lisa was stolen,

she was not the global image, by any means, that she is now.

There were a few photographs, but they were in black and white.

People didn't even know what colour she was.

That strange, murky sub-aqueous glow that she has.

People didn't know about that.

When she was stolen, however, he face became this very famous...

She's a poster, almost, and everybody knew what she looked like.

So, she started having a new life as a cartoon.

Very early cartoons would show her smirking or winking.

In Montmartre cabarets in Paris,

there were routines telling the story of the abduction of Mona Lisa.

I mean, from the beginning of its disappearance,

the painting became part of popular culture.

What is very strange, and yet persuasive, I think,

is that the early theories about who might've taken Mona Lisa

were that it must've been taken by someone who really appreciated painting.

And one of the very first suspects was Pablo Picasso -

already very famous, of course.

They went to his house and knocked on the door,

and tried to arrest him.

He happened to have in his flat, unbeknownst to the police at the time,

some works of art which actually HAD been stolen from the Louvre.

These were sculptures.

By night, stealthily, he thinks to himself,

"I've got to get rid of this evidence of the theft!"

Picasso had decided to throw the two statues into the Seine!

And that, after hesitating for a while, decided not to.

The Mona Lisa was found in Florence in the winter of 1913,

because the thieves had written to an antique dealer of the town.

telling him that he had a famous painting for sale.

And he was very easily arrested.

The experts have many different ways in which they can tell whether a painting is genuine or not.

They felt the need to look, to see if the exact pattern of cracks,

which you can still see on her face were there.

She, effectively, was identified by her wrinkles, if you like.

Vincenzo Peruggia, the Italian thief who stole the painting,

claimed that he was trying to return the Mona Lisa

to the motherland, back to Italy, where she came from.

He had actually worked in the Louvre Museum.

He was the man responsible

for fixing the glass pane on the painting in 1910.

And for two years, the painting was hidden in Vincenzo Peruggia's room in Paris.

There was one comic feature about this,

which is that he must have been rather proud of his secret.

Because he had a postcard of the Mona Lisa

which he kept on the mantelpiece in his flat all the time.

It seems, from his own testimony that what Peruggia did

was he had hidden in a cupboard between two galleries.

He stayed there all night in the dark, with his heart racing, wondering if he'd be found.

And in the morning, very early,

when just cleaners were in, he listened and waited until there was a silence

and then he just quietly got himself out of this cupboard,

and very quietly walked up to the painting, took her and hid her under his smock.

He went from the cupboard, to the painting, to the street,

I would guess, probably, in about 21 minutes. All over.

The whole thing was a complete fiasco from start to finish.

You know, the police found the left thumbprint of the thief on the glass frame.

It was no good, because back then, they only kept right hands on file.

Not left.

Still, she's back now.

We can be thankful for that at least.

Today, for the first time ever, the mail arrives by air.

This truly is a modern age.

One day, we may all receive our letters like this.

This autumn, the world is at war.

In China, there is bloody rebellion as the people lose patience with the centuries-old Qing dynasty.

Italy is at war with Turkey. The quarrel - sovereignty over a little-known corner of Africa.

MAN LAUGHS

Si, nessun problema!

Arrivederci!

HE GRUNTS

HE SIGHS

It's done,

for the first time in history.

The first time and it was me that did it!

Me, Giulio Gavotti!

HE LAUGHS

A couple of weeks ago, we sailed from Napoli.

The whole Servicio Aeronautico.

30 men, 9 planes, 11 pilots.

Piazzo and Luizzo had been up a few times.

They got right over the Turks

and came back with details about the enemy positions,

so our boys could get at them properly.

Piazzo said he just swooped down,

said you could see their faces just looking up at them.

I'm just amazed that they'd never seen anything like it before.

One journalist said that the Turks are telling the Arabs that our machines are magical creatures.

Monsters, genies with wings.

Evidently, they've come all the way from Constantinople. Special orders from the Sultan himself.

Damn fools, they think we're on their side.

-Well, not any more they don't.

-HE LAUGHS

Once upon a time...

all this was Rome.

Tripolitania here in the west...

Cyrenaica to the south...

past Benghazi...

Derna, Tobruk.

All the way to Egypt.

And now it's ours again.

Nostra quarta sponda.

Our fourth shore. Just as it was in Roman times.

From here, we can control the seas

and stand head-to-head with Germany and France.

They have their colonies and ours show the way.

And the land is good, too. Well, at least at the coast.

Nothing to the south. Just dirt and sand.

No industry to speak of, but we can change that.

Italians can do anything. Prego.

HE CHUCKLES

I was up most of the night.

I was too keyed up to sleep. Buzzing!

In the morning, it's overcast.

But as soon as it clears, I'm on the beach.

The lads are all ready. I'm flying the Taube.

Not as fast as the Newport, but nice and light.

I dug out this case. Got it ready the night before.

I make little pockets.

Then...!

They're Italian. Invented by Cappelli.

From the navy.

A steel shell filled with some kind of explosive.

There's a small iron ball in the centre

which smacks against the detonator when the bomb hits the ground,

setting the whole thing off.

The ball's kept in place by a pin,

which has to be pulled out before you throw it.

There's a tiny lever which has to be held onto

to stop the ball shifting

in the moment between taking out the pin and chucking the grenade.

They're not ideal.

Well, too heavy, for a start.

Plus they don't always explode on impact.

-But when they do go off...

-HE CHUCKLES

Cappelli himself, the guy who invented them...

BANG! Goes off in his hand.

Adios, Fratello Cappelli.

Plus you're doing all this with one hand

cos you've got to fly the plane with the other one.

I've got three in the case...and one in my jacket.

Then you've got to have detonators.

They go in another pocket.

Be careful when you're throwing them over the side.

You don't want to hit the wings. Not a good idea.

Anyway, like I said,

this is the first time anyone's done something like this.

I'm sure they'll think of something better.

Right!

I take off, I head out over the sea.

Below me, I can see our ships.

The Sicily anchored west of the Tripoli Oasis.

Brin, Saint Bon and Filiberto anchored in the harbour.

Sailors waving up at me. I'm still climbing.

As soon as I get to 700 metres, I turn and head inland.

Our lads are tucked in in the outskirts of the city.

Beyond that is desert.

I'm heading for Ain Zara, where we'd spotted the enemy the day before.

Soon I can see the dark shape of the oasis in front of me.

I fly the plane with one hand

and with the other, I take the strap off the box.

I take a bomb out and I put it between my legs.

I swap hands to get at the detonators.

I grab one, I stick it in my mouth.

I'm about a mile from the oasis.

I can see it all perfectly.

A small, square white house and two camps of tents.

One must be about 200 men, the other about 50 or so. I'm right overhead.

I can imagine them looking up at me. "What's all this then, eh?"

Like I said, the plane's a Taube. It's German. It means dove.

Up here, you can see the wires and pulleys, the whole control system that operates the plane.

But from underneath, it just looks like a big, wide pair of wings.

And the rudder at the back. Like feathers. Like a tail.

It's a beautiful thing.

I'm right over the camp now. I can hear firing.

They must be shooting at me.

I take the bomb in my right hand and I pull out the pin.

Throw the bomb, making sure it's well clear of the wing.

I watch it fall for a few seconds and then it disappears!

A dark cloud appears above one of the smaller camps.

I'd been aiming for the bigger camp, but still, a direct hit!

I turn the plane, I head back.

I drop two more bombs, then I head back for the beach.

I've still got one bomb left. The one in my jacket.

I take it out, I pull the pin and I throw it! I head back.

Coming in low over Tripoli.

Perfect landing! All the lads are there!

Captain Piazza shaking my hand.

Rossi and Mazzini laughing their heads off.

I report to the division and to General Canever.

The whole mission was a total success!

Some reporters want to talk to me. "You are a hero", they tell me.

Everyone will read about you in Giornale d'Italia,

the Corriere Della Sera!

All of Italy will know your name!

Me, Sottotenente Giulio Gavotti!

FAINT CHANTING

The wells are running dry.

They're sending bullets from Napoli.

Some of the men have cholera.

The fighting's messy.

Civilians getting caught up in it.

It'll be good to be done here.

Get back home.

What times we live in.

How lucky we are.

Only eight years since the Wright brothers.

The first flight.

Two years since Bleriot crossed the English Channel.

And now us!

We are the first! Huh!

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

And every day, we make our own little piece of history.

Last week, Piazza flew the first ever reconnaissance mission.

Today, I threw the first bomb.

Control the skies and you win the war.

Hit them first, then they'll submit.

Get it over with, nice and quick.

We need bigger planes.

70, 80, 100 horsepower.

And two people.

A pilot and someone to throw the bombs.

Or a machine.

Some kind of system.

And different bombs. Bigger. More accurate.

Poisoned gas, maybe.

I'm sure they'll think of something.

If there's one thing we know, it's that they will think of something.

That's progress.

'Thousands of women join a demonstration demanding the vote.

'Then things turn ugly.'

They just came out of nowhere!

I could see they were going to be bottling us in,

and so six of us broke rank and went down a side street

away from the rest of them in Parliament Square.

We turned a corner and there they were.

I was on the ground again.

Curled up to protect you.

You're doing fine.

That horse never kicked my belly.

Lying on the ground and for a moment...

..I felt nothing.

Sore now.

And then I felt the stone in my hand.

A stripy stone they brought off Ferry Beach.

He told me, he gave it to me and he says,

"Ma, can you take this to London so you don't forget me?"

I said to him, "Tommy, I'm only going away for three days".

Never been away.

I nearly laughed out loud when I seen they fine London ladies

getting out old rocks to smash windows with.

My father's a window cleaner.

Never broken a pane of glass in my life.

Skelped my arse and nae mistake if I got up to any high jinks as a bairn.

But this...this naen't a game.

We need to make them pay attention.

I took the biggest stones they had.

I was full of what I could do.

They were impressed, those fine London ladies.

We marched down strong to the government offices.

And then the first woman - I dinnae ken about her,

she'd been on the platform at the Albert Hall...

She hurls this rock - hard - and it smashes.

And all I could think of as they look at us...run!

RUN!

And she just stands there...

..calm...

dignified, waiting.

Wanting to be arrested.

Then she is.

I ken it sounds daft, but...

That bit...

..and what happens after...

Never thought that bit through before.

God, I'm standing with rocks,

ready to smash up London on my very first visit and...

..and that'll mean no going hame to Dundee.

To Tommy, or...to my good man,

who's waiting for me, proud as anything.

That'll mean going to Holloway.

The stories you hear of that place.

Am I strong enough to do that?

KNOCK AT DOOR

Er... Two minutes, sorry - I'll be right with you.

He's waiting for us outside the door.

The policeman.

He saved my life, I suppose.

Picked me up off the floor, any road.

Let me come in here and sort myself out before we get into the back of the Black Maria.

He's only young like me, maybe I cou...

Maybe I could charm him into clemency.

Leave my rocks in the sink, leave my sash on the floor...

White for purity, green for fertility.

Purple for dignity.

Oh, I love they colours now.

But they took them off - I'm just another innocent...

I could say I just got caught up with all the hundreds of others,

I had nae idea what was going on.

If he'd let me go hame.

Back to Dundee. Back to the jute mill...

And back to being what, exactly?

Someone who isn't worth counting on the Census.

Someone who doesn't count at all.

I've got four big brothers.

And they've never fought a battle for me.

Even in the playground, I fought my own corner.

"Dinnae cross Maggie", the other bairns'd say.

"You'll live to regret that".

Well, Mr Prime Minister...

..you crossed me.

And if I had five minutes in your office, Mr Asquith,

I'd give you a piece of my mind.

I'd make you change your intentions, that's for sure.

You've let me down.

Ah!

I will not have my bairns brought into a world

where the boy is a person and the girl is a possession.

Miss Pankhurst said it tonight.

"Men alone getting the vote

"only serves as one more rivet in the chains of half the human race."

I'll take what's coming if it makes way for change.

KNOCK AT DOOR

-Miss! Do you want me to come and fetch you?

-No, sir - that's me.

Oh, please, God.

Let there be one big window waiting out there for me

before they take me away in the back of that Black Maria.

Today, we celebrate a thoroughly modern woman,

as Marie Curie wins her second Nobel Prize.

She developed her theory of radioactivity

and discovered two new elements - Polonium and Radium.

Our sincere congratulations, madam.

But not all great discoveries happen down a microscope.

As the year draws to a close, two fearless explorers,

our own Captain Robert Falcon Scott

and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, race for the South Pole.

We set off today.

I missed out on the North Pole by a few months -

I will not let that damned Englishman take the South Pole from me.

We have no idea what faces us between here and the Pole.

This is the last uncharted wilderness.

An hour in, I'd already thought about turning back.

Three puppies followed us. If we went on, we'd have to shoot them.

But they turned back so soon.

Three days' good progress.

Then the temperature dropped.

It's minus 61 degrees out there.

As we sat around the tent, Hanssen suddenly said,

"Why, I think my foot's gone".

Off came his stockings

and there was this big, dead heel,

like a lump of wax.

I poked it...

It was frostbite.

If we are to win this game, every move must be made carefully.

It'd be really easy to freeze to death out here.

To risk the lives of the men and the dogs out of stubbornness...

(Damn it.)

We're heading back to base.

The last sledge arrived back eight hours late.

When they came in, I naturally asked Johansen what took him so long.

He swore at me.

In front of everyone.

Said that we'd abandoned them, that they'd only just made it back.

That we should have never started off this early in the season.

That my obsession with Scott was making me a danger to them all.

I can't talk to him when he's like that!

I've written him a letter,

explaining to him that he is no longer part of this expedition team.

What else can I do?

GRAMOPHONE PLAYS "Remember" by Irving Berlin

# One little kiss, a moment of bliss

# Then hours of deep regret

# One little smile... #

'Still waiting for better weather.'

# After a while, a longing to forget

# One little heartache left as a token

# One little plaything carelessly broken

# Remember the night

# The night you said, "I love you"

# Remember

# Remember you vowed... #

Bjaaland spotted a flight of petrels.

Wonderful sight! We tumbled out of the hut to greet them.

Spring has finally arrived.

17 miles we covered yesterday.

The dogs were fantastic, magnificent.

And then, suddenly, Bjaaland's sledge started sinking.

The sledge disappeared. Completely!

The huskies dug their claws in and Bjaaland's shouting,

"I cannot hold it".

And inch by inch, the sledge is slipping into the abyss,

taking the dogs with it,

so I threw myself at him and grabbed him.

They threw a rope around the sledge,

but we could not haul the sledge up.

Someone would have to go down.

On a rope.

So they all volunteered.

All of them.

I chose Wisting.

He's dextrous.

And light.

He shouted up that the ice that we were standing on

was only a few inches thick.

We worked as fast as we could,

but it took a long hour and a half before everything was up.

That was a treat,

to get back into the tent tonight.

For the day has been a bitter one.

Now we finally see what faces us.

I have named one of the peaks Mount Betty, after my nursemaid.

She would be proud.

I think.

A terrible climb.

The hardest day we've had.

The dogs worked so well today.

Tonight, 24 of them are dead.

They did not deserve this.

But we only need 18 of them for the final journey.

We're calling this ridge the Butcher's Shop.

Tomorrow we will skin them and eat fresh meat.

Tonight, none of us can face it.

We are grown so fond of these dogs.

We'd left our crampons at the Butcher's Shop.

Without them, climbing on sheer ice is almost impossible.

A thousand thoughts ran through my brain. How stupid, idiotic...

This blunder may lose me the Pole.

Everybody's tired.

Hunger makes the dogs eat their own mess.

Tonight I dreamed I'd reached the Pole

and Scott was there,

arms outstretched, smiling, waiting to greet me.

I woke up, sweating...

and shouting.

Five miles to go. If Scott has been there, we'll see a British flag.

No-one mentions this, but we're all looking.

We have made it!

The five of us together drive the Norwegian flag into the snow.

The sun circles above our head day and night

and we're the first to ever see it.

Never has a man's goal been so opposite to his wishes.

The NORTH Pole, devil take it!

HE LAUGHS

It fascinated me since childhood, now here I am -

at the South.

I'm writing a letter to Scott to leave here.

He will be the next man to encounter this godforsaken spot.

And if we have trouble on our journey home,

he may well make it back before us.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]