Self-sacrifice of Oates, a '˜very gallant gentleman', still an inspiration today

A plaque was recently dedicated in St Macartin’s Cathedral in Enniskillen in memory of Captain Lawrence Oates of the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoon Guards and a member of the ill-fated Scott expedition to the South Pole.

In March 1912 Captain Oates walked from a tent into an Antarctic blizzard, with the words: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’

He did so in the belief that he was compromising his three companions’ chances of survival.

Robert Falcon Scott also recorded in his diary: ‘We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman’. Unfortunately, Oates’ sacrifice was to no avail.

Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers continued onwards for a further 20 miles towards the ‘One Ton’ food depot that could have saved them but were halted at latitude 79°40’S by a fierce blizzard on March 20.

Trapped in their tent by the weather and too weak, cold and malnourished to continue, they eventually died nine days later, only 11 miles short of their objective.

Their frozen bodies were discovered by a search party on November 12 1912.

Oates, the son of William and Caroline Oates, was born in London in 1880.

His uncle was the naturalist and African explorer Frank Oates, a fact perhaps of some significance. Educated at Eton, he saw active service in the Second Boer War as a junior officer in the Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.

In March 1901 while leading a patrol he was ambushed and outnumbered. Oates was unwilling to contemplate withdrawal and held his ground. The Boers dispatched a man with a white flag to ask him to surrender. Oates’ response was: ‘We came here to fight, not to surrender.’ The Boers eventually retreated.

For this episode Oates was recommended for a VC which was not awarded.

He sustained a wound to his thigh which left it shattered and his left leg an inch shorter than his right when it eventually healed.

In 1910 he applied to join Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.

His application was successful partially because of his experience with horses and partially on account of his ability to make a financial contribution of £1,000, a very substantial amount of money in 1910, perhaps the equivalent of £60,000 or more today, towards the expedition.

Oates’ role was to look after the ponies that Scott intended to use for sledge hauling during the initial food depot-laying stage and the first half of the trip to the South Pole.

However, Scott eventually selected him as one of the five-man party who would travel the final distance to the pole.

Oates and Scott did not see eye-to-eye on a number of issues relating to the management of the expedition.

First, Oates had no role in the acquisition of the Siberian ponies for the expedition and he was appalled by the poor quality of the ponies (‘a wretched load of old crocks’) which Scott had purchased.

Secondly, he regarded ‘Scott’s ignorance about marching with animals’ as ‘colossal’.

Thirdly, he confided to his diary that he disliked Scott ‘intensely’ and that he would have ‘chucked the whole thing if it were not that we are a British expedition … He [Scott] is not straight, it is himself first, the rest nowhere ...’

Admittedly, Oates was prepared to concede that his harsh words were often a product of the harsh conditions. Scott, more charitably, referred to Oates as ‘the cheery old pessimist’. Scott recorded: ‘The Soldier takes a gloomy view of everything, but I’ve come to see that this is a characteristic of him’. With the benefit of hindsight, we may conclude that Oates was a realist rather than pessimist.

On January 18 1912, 79 days after starting their journey, Scott’s party reached the South Pole only to discover a tent which their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen and his four-man team had left behind at their camp after beating them in the race to be first to the pole. Inside the tent was a note from Amundsen informing them that his party had reached the South Pole on December 14 1911, thus beating Scott’s party by 35 days.

All five members of Scott’s expedition perished on the horrendous return journey, through a combination of exceptionally adverse weather, inadequate food, injuries sustained from falls, and the effects of scurvy and frostbite. Scott recorded in his journal: ‘We shall stick it out to the end … It seems a pity but I cannot write any more.’

The over-arching explanation for the failure of Scott’s expedition is the stark contrast between the professionalism of Amundsen’s expedition (which Oates greatly admired) and the gentlemanly amateurism of Scott’s expedition. Scott’s courage and egotism could not compensate for the wrong-headed decision to use man-hauled sledges rather than dog teams to cross the Antarctic.

Although, as already noted, the frozen bodies of Oates’ companions were discovered by a search party, Oates’ body was never found. Near where he was presumed to have died, the search party erected a cairn and cross bearing the inscription: ‘Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L. E. G. Oates, of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard, to try and save his comrades, beset by hardships.’ This epitaph echoes John 15:13: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’

The Royal Dragoon Guards, formed in 1992 by the amalgamation of two other regiments, the 4/7th Royal Dragoon Guards and the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, annually commemorate Oates’ self-sacrifice on the Sunday closest to St Patrick’s Day, the date of Captain Oates’ birthday (and probably the date on which he died). The commemoration consists of a formal parade and church service, where the story of Oates is retold to inspire present-day members of the regiment.