Futility Closet - 295-An Unlikely Attempt on Everest

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from a Sanskrit palindrome to a self-vandalizing typeface. This is episode 295. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1932, Yorkshireman Maurice Wilson chose a startling way to promote his mystical beliefs. He would fly to Mount Everest and climb it alone. In today's show, we'll follow Wilson's misguided adventure, which one writer called the most incredible story in all the eventful history of Mount Everest. We'll also explore an enigmatic musician and puzzle over a mighty cola.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Maurice Wilson was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1898, the third of four sons, and had a happy childhood in a comfortable middle-class home. His father was admired for his charity, and Maurice inherited his sympathy for the less fortunate. Plus, he was bright, physically strong, and adept at picking up languages. He was about to follow his father into the textile industry when the First World War broke out, and he enlisted on the day after his 18th birthday. The war affected him profoundly, as it did countless other young men. Fighting for a remote French village in early 1918, he was commanding a machine gun post.

Starting point is 00:01:32 When the positions to his right and left were abandoned, all his men were killed or wounded, and he found himself single-handedly defending the front of the British line until a counterattack could throw back the enemy. He was awarded the military cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, but he returned to Bradford shattered by his experiences, unable to settle or to find meaning in the life that had been planned for him before the war. He led an unsatisfied existence in a textile office, went to London for 18 months, and then

Starting point is 00:02:00 tried a series of jobs in America and New Zealand, successful in many of them but still restless. On one ship journey from Bombay to London, he met a group of Indian ascetics who told him how people could endure extreme physical ordeals without ill effect. That idea seems to have intrigued him, and when his health suddenly deteriorated in the summer of 1932, he went to a mystic in Mayfair who suggested faith and fasting, and within a couple of months, Wilson was well. He felt as though he'd been literally reborn. He had fasted for 35 days and prayed to God to make him a new man, and God had done it. Now he believed that faith and fasting could accomplish anything, and he wanted to prove it to the world. As he was recuperating in the Black Forest, he chanced to see a newspaper clipping about the 1924 expedition to Mount Everest.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Mountaineering stories in those days were front-page news, somewhat akin to stories of the space race decades later. And unfortunately, the news coverage of British expeditions tended to downplay the physical danger and technical difficulty involved in a climb, so that a naive reader might think it was a matter of sheer determination. Wilson decided to prove his theory by climbing the mountain himself and by doing it alone. He pointed out to his friends that the 1924 expedition had had 300 porters, several hundred ponies, and scores of yaks, he said, and they didn't get very far, did they? He spent two months in London libraries reading the whole known literature on Everest. What he learned must have shown him that the task was impossible,

Starting point is 00:03:27 but that seemed only to increase his determination to go. He wrote, Nothing can stop my trying to climb Mount Everest. Obviously, I think I can do it, or I shouldn't be going to try. Unbelievably, his first plan was to drop by parachute onto the summit from the wing of a plane. That pretty quickly appeared impossible even to Wilson, but it got him thinking about flying. He told his friends, suppose I fly myself to Everest and crash land on the lower slopes, then it will be a straight, short climb to the top. When they

Starting point is 00:03:55 pointed out that he didn't know how to fly or climb, he said, I know, but I can learn. He'd never been up in an airplane before, let alone piloted one, but he bought a gypsy moth biplane, painted the words ever rest on its nose, and began taking flying lessons. He was only shakily successful. Where most students were ready to fly solo after 8 to 10 hour long sessions, Wilson needed 19. It was months before he got his A certificate, and he kept up his practice afterwards, sensing that he still wasn't good enough. His physical training consisted of walking several times from London to Bradford and hiking in the

Starting point is 00:04:29 Lake District and the Welsh Mountains, and he seems to have made no serious attempt to acquire even the rudiments of a mountaineer's basic technique. The press began to take an avid interest in all this. Between 1933 and 1934, the London Times alone published nearly 100 articles on Wilson's quest. He liked to be interviewed, and he made good copy, though he was furious when one paper called the plan an elaborate suicide. He studied the route on maps, and when he thought he was ready, he flew to Bradford to say goodbye to his family. Unfortunately, the engine died on the way there, and he made a forced landing near Brighouse. He wasn't hurt, but it would take three weeks to repair the damage to the plane, and that meant the climbing season might end before he could reach the mountain. Still, he planned to depart as soon as possible.

Starting point is 00:05:13 He could spend his time there doing useful reconnaissance. The accident brought him to the attention of the Air Ministry, which wrote to warn him that the government of Nepal was unlikely to give him permission to fly into their airspace, but he told reporters, the gloves are off, I'm going on as planned. Stop me, they haven't got a chance. A large crowd gathered to watch him depart on May 21st. Inauspiciously, he took off downwind and nearly crashed, but he got airborne and headed south-southeast. His flight to India is regarded as a forgotten epic in the history of aviation. He had no radio or weather forecasts, and he had departed with only 200 hours of solo flying experience. There were few airports along the way, and he would get routine inspections only twice on a flight of 5,000 miles over some of the most desolate country in the world.

Starting point is 00:06:03 But here, as everywhere, luck and optimism seemed to serve him. He got safely across Europe and made his way down the Italian peninsula. While getting his 50-hour inspection at Rome, he wrote to friends back home, So far the trip is a piece of cake. I'm now able to keep the plane on course without looking constantly at the compass. Funny how it comes to you. To avoid dense clouds over the Mediterranean, he flew only slightly above sea level. From Tunisia, he made his way unsteadily eastward across North Africa and landed at Cairo right on schedule,

Starting point is 00:06:34 a week after his departure from England. From here, it seems increasingly clear that the British government began putting obstacles in his way to avoid embarrassment. He would need a permit to enter Persian airspace, but the permit wasn't waiting for him in Cairo nor in Baghdad. In Bahrain, the British government had arranged to deny him even fuel, arguing that every airstrip he might reach from that point was within Persian territory. They agreed to give him a fuel chit on condition that he fly straight to the nearest aerodrome, but he saw that this was within Persia. If he landed there, his plane would be impounded and he would be arrested. So he pretended to agree, but then talked a mechanic into giving him an extra drum of fuel. That gave him a range of 770 miles, exactly enough to get to Gwadar, an overseas possession of Oman. He had no maps, and this route was almost entirely over water, so if he ran out of petrol, he would very likely die.

Starting point is 00:07:21 But he determined to try it. Once airborne, he headed not north into Persia, but east over the Persian Gulf toward Balochistan and Everest. For nine and a half hours, he flew almost due east, first across the Gulf and then over the Indian Ocean, his body cramping and his mind aching with fatigue. When he landed at Gwadar, his fuel gauge read empty. It had taken him a little under a fortnight to travel 5,000 miles. Over the next week, he made his way slowly from airport to airport on his way to Purnia in eastern India. Twice more he was denied petrol, apparently at government orders, but on each occasion he contrived to get more. It was nearly mid-June when he reached Purnia. The local chief of police was

Starting point is 00:08:02 under orders to stop him from flying into Nepal without a permit. He put the plane under guard and made Wilson pay the cost. The expense eventually forced Wilson to sell the plane, but by that time the Maharaja of Nepal had refused him permission to fly through the country anyway, so he resolved to make the rest of the journey on foot. At the end of July, he took a hotel room in Darjeeling, hoping to approach Everest from the flank via Sikkim and Tibet rather than Nepal. He was denied permission to enter those regions as well, so he decided to conceal his identity. Disguised as a Tibetan priest, he could travel without a permit, and by moving at night, he could evade the police. He managed to find three Sherpa porters who had participated in Hugh Rutledge's expedition to Everest the year before, and they helped him plan a journey along a little-used approach

Starting point is 00:08:47 to the Rongbook Monastery near the base of the mountain. He bought a pony, telling the authorities he'd been invited on a tiger hunt, and to mislead them further, he paid for his hotel room six months in advance. On the night of March 21, 1934, he and the porters slipped out of Darjeeling, following a short but difficult route through the Tista Valley. When the Sherpas had to visit local villages to get food, they told people their companion was a deaf priest who was very sick in order to discourage visitors. Near the border, the snow lay in drifts six feet deep, but they crossed safely into Tibet and advanced with surprising speed. On the first day, they covered 28 miles. The conditions were awful, with screaming wind,

Starting point is 00:09:25 snow, and sand, but apart from a headache and some trouble sleeping, Wilson was optimistic, happy, and climbing as well as the Sherpas. His diary entry for April 12th ends, Am already planning for future after the event. I must win. Two days later, they reached the monastery, 20 miles from the mountain. Getting even this far was an impressive achievement. He'd flown safely to India against all odds, and he'd crossed 300 miles of Sikkim and Tibet in 25 days. Other mountaineers would later describe Wilson's journey as an extraordinary achievement, a first-class effort, and a minor epic of endurance. But the experts were still certain he would not reach the summit, and the modern consensus is that he never had a chance.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Even if he could fight his way through cold, blizzards, altitude, loneliness, depression, and fear, he had no technical climbing skill, believing that God would guide his steps. He had brought only a single length of rope and one ice axe, and he didn't know how to use either one with any efficiency. His timing, at least, was good. April 17th was considered the ideal date for an early start, and he set out on the 16th. His clothing was lightweight, warm, and windproof, and he had reached 16,000 feet in fine condition. He'd be following what was then thought to be the only way to the summit, along the East Rongbook Glacier, up a saddle of snow known as the North Call,

Starting point is 00:10:40 and onto the northeast ridge of the mountain. He rose at dawn and set out alone. He could mark his progress by the campsites that Rutledge had established the year before. On the first day, he reached the base camp at 16,500 feet, and the following morning he reached Camp 1. But now he had to negotiate the glacier, the first mountaineering problem he had ever faced, and he found it bewildering and exhausting. When he pitched his tent on the second night, he had covered only about half the distance he'd hoped, and his headway continued to shrink. He reached Camp 2 halfway up

Starting point is 00:11:10 the glacier on April 18th, but began to despair of reaching the summit on his birthday three days later, as he'd hoped. Above Camp 2, the character of the glacier changed, and he took the wrong strategy and got lost. The next day, he struggled as far as 20,500 feet, a couple of miles from Camp 3, but now a steady snow set in and he spent day after day waiting in the tent as his food supply dwindled. Finally, he decided to go back to the monastery. He wrote in his diary, It's the weather that has beaten me. What damned bad luck. That's not really true. All weather on Everest is bad, and in fact it was only good luck that had saved him from serious disaster. It was nearly a miracle that he managed to return safely to his friends. He descended 5,000 feet in a single day and reached the monastery at 10 p.m. with a wrenched ankle

Starting point is 00:11:54 and a half-paralyzed arm. But his indomitable optimism hadn't deserted him. He wrote in his diary, next time I'll take more supplies with me. I'll not give up. I still know that I can do it. Then he collapsed and slept for 38 hours. In discussing the next attempt, they agreed that two Sherpas would accompany Wilson as far as Camp 3, which was just below an icefall guarding the North Call. They would bring enough provisions to set up a well-stocked camp there, and when the weather permitted, Wilson would make a bid for the summit. But his inexperience was increasingly telling. They reached Camp 3 safely enough, and Wilson wrote in his diary, summit and route to it can be seen quite clearly now, only another 8,000 feet to go. But the icefall he had to climb rose 1,500 feet from the glacier to the North Call, and Wilson arrived expecting to use the ice steps that Rutledge had cut a year before. Those were long

Starting point is 00:12:45 gone, and the experience of cutting steps himself was exhausting. He pitched his tent on a ledge only a third of the way up, and the next day it took him three hours to climb a narrow gully. After another night and more arduous climbing, he had crossed a crevasse and reached the foot of the last ice cliff leading to the call at just under 23,000 feet. That was as far as he got. He spent seven hours trying to climb a chimney to reach the call, but he found it insurmountable. At the end of the day, he must have known he'd never climb Everest alone. Now he faced a choice. He could keep trying until he fell, he could wait for death in his tent, or he could return to the Sherpas and try to get them to come with him. He chose the last option. In less than five hours, he somehow descended 1,500 feet of extremely difficult ice, falling twice but

Starting point is 00:13:30 stopped by soft snow. By nightfall, he had reached Camp 3 and the Sherpas. He ate a bowl of soup and slept for 30 hours. When he awoke at 11 p.m. on May 26th, they had a hot meal ready for him. He was touched by their kindness and anxiety for him, but when they talked of returning to Wrong Book, he said, I didn't come back because I'd given up. I came back because I want you to come with me to Camp 4. They were dead set against this. All three of them were weak, and Wilson was partially snowblind and suffering from exhaustion and lack of oxygen. They didn't have the manpower to get everything up the icefall and establish a well-stocked camp, and though they may not have said it, the Sherpas knew that Wilson lacked the technical skill to reach the summit.

Starting point is 00:14:10 They absolutely refused to continue. In the end, Wilson considered, and wrote in his diary, faith is not faith that wavers when its prayers remain unanswered. That night, from his kid, he retrieved what he called the Flag of Friendship, a silk pennant on which his closest friends had signed their names. Also into his rucksack he put his oxygen equipment and enough food for seven days. He reckoned that he would climb to the top in four or five days and then rely on exhilaration to carry him down the mountain. He slept reasonably well, and the next morning he was up early. He went to the Sherpa's tent and told them he was determined to make a

Starting point is 00:14:43 last attempt. Would they come with him? They refused again. and told them he was determined to make a last attempt. Would they come with him? They refused again. He told them, The three Sherpas, at length, made their way back down the mountain and reported that Wilson had not returned. On July 20th, headlines began to appear. Lone death on Everest, pluck or suicide, and Excelsior with a Union Jack. None of the stories mentioned Wilson's reason for climbing the mountain.

Starting point is 00:15:23 Judging from his diary, he probably got only a little beyond the Great Crevasse, gave up in exhaustion, and retreated. He spent the next day in his sleeping bag, too weak to do more. The last entry in his diary on May 31st reads, Off again, gorgeous day. He must have fought the icefall until the evening, stumbled down to its foot, and pitched his tent. Probably he hoped to rest there for another day, but sometime that night or the next morning he died of cold, exhaustion, and exposure. He was 7,000 feet below the summit. A year passed, and then early in July 1935, a party led by Eric Shipton arrived at the foot of the mountain for a reconnaissance climb. Among them, in his first encounter with Everest, was a 21-year-old Sherpa named Tenzing Norgay. On July 9th, they found Maurice Wilson's body. It was lying at the very foot of the ice

Starting point is 00:16:05 fall, only 300 yards above Camp 3. Of his tent, only the guy lines remained. The rest had been swept away by the monsoon and by winter storms. Wilson's body still wore its windproof clothing, and his rucksack was by his side. Shipton's party held a simple funeral service and tipped the body into a 10-foot snow crevasse. One of them, Charles Warren, wrote, We all raised our hats at the time, and I think that everyone was rather upset at the business. I thought I had grown immune to the sight of the dead, but somehow or other, in the circumstances, and because of the fact that he was, after all, doing much the same as ourselves, his tragedy seemed to have been brought a little too near home for us.

Starting point is 00:16:42 As the news spread of Wilson's death, observers lamented his foolishness and poor planning, but admired his determination and fortitude. The New York Times wrote, not since Longfellow gave the world the ballad Excelsior has there been a story like Wilson's, either in fact or in fiction. Even other climbers could find something to admire in his steadfastness and the nobility of his purpose. After hearing the diary read, Eric Shipton wrote, it was obvious that he had little liking for the mountains, and he certainly claimed no spiritual uplift in their presence. At the same time, I did not feel that he was striving for personal glorification. He believed that he was guided by some kind of divine inspiration to deliver a

Starting point is 00:17:18 message to humanity. His implicit faith in his destiny seems to have been with him to the last. We cannot fail to admire his courage. The English climber Frank Smythe wrote, It was not mountaineering, yet it was magnificent. The first successful solo ascent of Mount Everest wasn't accomplished until 1980 by the Italian climber Reinhold Messner, who acknowledged Wilson's resolve. He wrote, Even after terrible snowstorms and several falls, Wilson had not given up.

Starting point is 00:17:45 So long as Wilson was able to remain on his legs, he climbed upwards like one possessed, born aloft by belief and by God. There was nothing in Maurice Wilson's happy youth in Yorkshire that could have predicted he would die alone on Mount Everest. Like so many others in that lost generation, his horrifying experience in the trenches had left him restless and haunted. lost generation, his horrifying experience in the trenches had left him restless and haunted. One observer calls him a case study in post-war neurasthenia. What sets him apart is his unwavering optimism, his unshakable and ultimately tragic faith in himself. As he had slipped out of Darjeeling in March 1934, Wilson had posted a final letter to England. In it, he wrote, Man proposes and God disposes, though in my case I think he did both.

Starting point is 00:18:26 I have the distinct feeling of knowing that I shall return, though if things turn out otherwise, I've at least had some kick out of life, and if I had my life to live over again, I wouldn't wish it any other way. In episode 289, I discussed the novelty Christmas song Snoopy's Christmas, which was and still is quite popular in New Zealand, despite its not having had much of an impact in America, its country of origin. Cheryl Jensen from Alberta, Canada wrote, Good morning Sharon and Greg. Thank you for many hours of informative entertainment. I only discovered your show a few months ago and am happily binging on old episodes.

Starting point is 00:19:16 Episode 289 brought back happy memories as you discussed the song Snoopy's Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen, which to my delight is apparently a traditional favorite in New Zealand. The Snoopy songs were popular when my older sister was a teenager, and as a preschooler I loved their exciting narrative. I inherited three of the Snoopy records when my sister decided to get rid of her old 45s. I may have to go play them again on an old turntable my husband refused to get rid of. As vinyl seems to be making a small comeback, I guess he was right. Your conversation about forgotten recordings reminded me of the documentary Searching for Sugarman. During the 1970s, Sixto Rodriguez recorded two and a half albums in the U.S., which didn't go anywhere. However, unbeknownst to him, his records exploded in the South African market, where he was nearly as big as Elvis.

Starting point is 00:20:01 Decades later, amidst rumors Rodriguez committed a spectacular suicide on stage, two enthusiastic South African fans embark on a quest to find out what really happened to this popular artist. When they track him down, Rodriguez, now a humble day laborer in his 60s and living in Detroit, is persuaded by them to go on tour. My favorite part of the documentary is his boss sharing his reaction when this quiet, unassuming older man tells him he needs time off work to go perform a concert in South Africa. Anyway, it's just the kind of story I think Futility Closet would love. I've provided a link to an overview of his information, but if you can see the documentary, you can get a better feel for the whole remarkable

Starting point is 00:20:39 story and get to see and hear Rodriguez himself. As Mark Twain allegedly said, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Thanks again for all your hard work. Detroit native Sexto Rodriguez released two albums of what the Washington Post called streetwise protest songs in the early 1970s. The Post says, the lyrics were elegant and graceful, the message is potent. He was supposed to be the next Bob Dylan. Rodriguez's music really caught fire in South Africa, especially with the more liberal anti-apartheid youth of the country, where he was seen as a superstar on the level of Elvis Presley or the Rolling Stones. However, in the rather closed-off country pre-internet, no one actually knew anything about Rodriguez, and the rumors swirled about him, like that he was in prison for murdering his lover, or had been committed to a mental hospital, or had shot himself or burned himself to death while on stage. Most of his South African fan base really believed him to be dead,

Starting point is 00:21:34 possibly because that seemed like the most likely explanation for how such a wildly popular musician wasn't producing any more works. The answer, though, was that despite some minor success in Australia and New Zealand, and a concert tour of Australia in 1979, Rodriguez's music had just not caught on at all in the U.S. or most anywhere else. As the Post says, there was no fade into obscurity, he never escaped it in the first place. Similarly, an article in The Guardian says that when a letter was written to Q Magazine in 1996 appealing for any information about Rodriguez, no one replied, possibly because no one in Britain had heard of Rodriguez. He had given up his musical ambitions, bought a derelict house in Detroit at government auction for $50, and worked as a laborer while he unsuccessfully ran for public office several times.

Starting point is 00:22:30 Completely unbeknownst to Rodriguez, who didn't receive any royalties for the hundreds of thousands of his records sold in South Africa, his popularity remained high in that country, and in the 1990s, a record store owner and fan of Rodriguez's music partnered with an investigative journalist to try to find out whatever they could about him. Rodriguez's eldest daughter apparently came across a website of theirs in 1997 and sent them a surprised email asking if they really wanted to know about her father. As the Guardian said in 2005, what followed next was a series of rapturously received South African tours, two documentaries, and a platinum disc. Rodriguez's resurrected career continued to grow, and besides South Africa, he held concerts in Australia and New Zealand, and his two albums were re-released. After Searching for Sugar Man, an award-winning and widely acclaimed documentary, was released in 2012,

Starting point is 00:23:17 Rodriguez's fame rose even higher and spread more broadly, and for the last few years he's been touring in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The Washington Post quotes Rodriguez as saying of his first attempted musical career, I was ready for the world. I don't think the world was ready for me. I was thinking that must have been so confusing from his point of view, because you can't tell yourself you're no good because you're wildly popular in certain areas. Well, he didn't know that, though. He didn't know, even in South Africa, he didn't get word that he was... No, he had no idea whatsoever how popular, even in South Africa, he didn't get word that he was... No, he had no idea

Starting point is 00:23:45 whatsoever how popular he was in South Africa. He received no royalties for any of his albums. He had no idea that the albums were selling so well. He had no idea that he was still so popular. He had like zero idea about any of it because South Africa was so closed off at the time. So that's even worse than... So he just thought it wasn't working anywhere. Right. That's why he completely gave up. He just gave up on a musical career and was working as a physical laborer with no ideas about any of this. And it was when he was in his 60s that he actually learned. That someone told him. You know, like, hey, you're really popular in South Africa. They really, really like you.

Starting point is 00:24:21 Helen Deacon also wrote about Snoopy's Christmas. Thank you for solving this mystery. When I was about 10, there was a song my friends and I sang while exploring the fields around Hucknall near Nottingham, England. I have never been able to remember who it was by. As soon as I listened to Snoopy's Christmas, I knew that was the group. A little more exploring and there it was. The reason for our singing? Our explorations were next to the local airfield, and we had just watched the film The One That Got Away, about the only German POW to escape from the British, via Canada if my memory serves. One of von Fera's attempts was actually from this airfield. The fact we were singing a World War I song after watching a World War II film reveals our poor grasp of history. I am glad to report my knowledge since then has greatly improved, especially by listening to Futility Closet. Thank you for all your hard work and

Starting point is 00:25:09 fascinating episodes, especially as I'm isolated due to mild COVID symptoms. You are keeping me sane. And I'm happy to report that Helen has mostly recovered from her illness since sending her email. I actually had not heard of Franz von Vera before, but he was a German World War II fighter pilot and ace who was shot down and captured in Britain. Interestingly, I wasn't able to find a lot of really authoritative looking details about his story online, so I'm having to rely more heavily on the Wikipedia article alone for some of the details on this than I usually prefer to. But what I did find says that von Fera made several unsuccessful escape attempts in Britain, some as simple as just basically running away, and others as complicated as being part of a group who managed to tunnel out of a camp. In that last attempt, in December 1940, von Fera and

Starting point is 00:25:56 four other POWs did escape through the tunnel, but the others were quickly recaptured. Von Fera had brought along a pilot suit, presented himself as a Dutch Air Force pilot at a nearby railway station, and asked to be taken to the nearest RAF base, which was RAF Hucknall. On the base, Von Fera managed to get himself into a plane and was trying to figure out the controls when he was arrested and sent back to camp. In January 1941, he was sent with a number of other German POWs to Canada, where he jumped out of a train window in Ontario. He had planned in advance to try to make it to the United States, which hadn't yet entered the war, and he successfully made his way to New York by crossing the frozen St.

Starting point is 00:26:34 Lawrence River. The German vice consul there helped get him to Mexico, and after traveling through Brazil, Spain, and Italy, von Wehra finally made it back to Germany in April 1941, where he was celebrated as a hero. He returned to active service in the Le Fafa and scored several more aerial victories until his aircraft suffered complete engine failure in October 1941 and crashed into the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands. Von Fera is generally regarded as the only Axis prisoner to have successfully escaped from Canadian custody, or from British captivity more generally.

Starting point is 00:27:11 Though, according to Wikipedia, at least some say that a captured U-boat seaman is also claimed to have escaped in Canada by jumping from a ship into the St. Lawrence River in July 1940. Robin Quinn is one of those who makes this claim in the 2015 book Hitler's Last Army, German POWs in Britain, stating that Walter Kurt Reich squeezed through a porthole on the ship, swam ashore, and made his way to the U.S. and eventually returned to Germany. If this is true, then von Farah was neither the only nor even the first to have successfully escaped. Incidentally, according to an article in The Telegraph, there were no German POWs that successfully escaped in Britain during the Second World War, though there was one that did manage to do it during the first. While I was trying to

Starting point is 00:27:49 learn more about von Fera's story, I came across a 2017 article in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, which is apparently a fairly new discipline that encompasses the scientific study of battle sites, war infrastructure and fortifications, and POW sites. This article asserts that in general there has been a lot less study and acknowledgement of Axis POW escape attempts compared with the Allied ones, and the article details a multidisciplinary investigation of an escape attempt of 83 German POWs from a camp in South Wales in 1945 using a hand-dug tunnel. The authors make the case that this event is much less documented than the somewhat similar escape attempt by 76 Allied POWs from the German camp

Starting point is 00:28:32 Stalag Luft 3, often called the Great Escape, that we covered in episode 54. And it seemed to me that this relative lack of attention to Axis escape attempts might make it harder to know for sure whether von Wehra's successful escape is as rare as claimed to be. The type of warning that I usually saw in regard to von Wehra's successful escape being unique is exemplified by the article in the Telegraph, which uses the phrase, common belief has it, or the Wikipedia article, which says he is generally regarded as. I'm not sure if that hedging is because of the claims about Reich, or if it's just that for this type of thing, it can be hard to be positive that something didn't happen that just wasn't documented or publicized. It would be. This sounds like such dramatic stories. I'd

Starting point is 00:29:13 like to know more about them. I mean, it's a shame that maybe some of this has been lost now. Yeah. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We're always sorry that we can't read all the email that we get on the show, but we really do appreciate getting your comments, updates, and feedback. So if you have any of those to share, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to see if I can figure out what is going on, asking yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:29:51 This is from listener Paul Heitkemper. In the late 1980s, Pepsi-Cola briefly became the sixth most powerful military in the world. How? Oh, my. Pepsi-Cola became the sixth most powerful military in the world. I don't even know where to go with that. Pepsi-Cola somehow became some kind of armed forces? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:21 Yes. Was this in a totally fictional kind of way? No. No, it actually happened. Does it matter where in the world? Were they in like a specific place? Yeah, I think I can say yes to that. Should I try to work out that or it's not?

Starting point is 00:30:39 Yeah, actually it might help. I was trying to predict how we were going to go with this one. Should I like start guessing continents? Were they on land? Let's start with that. Were they on land? No. No.

Starting point is 00:30:50 Were they in or on the water? Yes. I don't want to make you guess a place because that could take- I mean, were they on a submarine or a boat? No. A set of submarines or boats? Yes. A set of submarines or boats. Yes. A set of submarines or boats.

Starting point is 00:31:06 So Pepsi-Cola like owned ships? Yes. Pepsi-Cola owned ships that you would consider sort of like naval ships or something like that. Exactly. They did. And should I guess in which ocean? No, you don't need that.

Starting point is 00:31:19 I don't need that. I just need to know that it was ships. They just wound up owning... They ended up owning like a fleet of ships. Yes. Of Navy ships. They just wound up owning. They ended up owning like a fleet of ships. Yes. Of Navy ships. Yeah. So how did Pepsi-Cola end up, was this some kind of business deal?

Starting point is 00:31:33 Yes. And would you call it an investment? No. No. Oh, did somebody owe them money and instead of being able to pay, paid them in ships? Yes. Yes. Like some government. Yes, he paid them in ships. Yes. Yes. Like some government. Yes. Paid them in ships. Basically, that's it. It's the Soviet Union. The Soviets had developed a taste for Pepsi, but their money wasn't accepted throughout the world. In the past,

Starting point is 00:31:56 they had traded vodka for Pepsi, but in the late 1980s, they didn't have enough vodka to renew their agreement with Pepsi. So they traded a fleet of subs and ships, including 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer. In return, they got $3 billion worth of Pepsi. Pepsi eventually sold the fleet to a Swedish company for scrap recycling. They didn't want to own their own Navy. No, I guess they could have kept it. I haven't thought about that. Thanks, Paul. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet really relies on the support of our listeners. If you would like to become one of our amazing patrons who help support the show and get bonus material such as outtakes, extra

Starting point is 00:32:43 discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes, then check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us page at our website at futilitycloset.com. At our website, you'll also find over 11,000 quirky curiosities, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast, with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can always email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All our music was written and performed by my phenomenal brother-in-law,

Starting point is 00:33:20 Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 295-An Unlikely Attempt on Everest

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