Q: Why was Byrd compelled to go back to Antarctica for the second
expedition?
LR: Well, the basic point I think is that first of all he felt for whatever
forces drove him that he could not rest on his laurels. And the second point
was, and he, he made this quote and it was quoted in his obituaries, that once
having gone to Antarctica he was "pathetically desirous" of getting back. The
Antarctic exerts that kind of a lure on a lot of people. It's a very strange,
beautiful, wild place. And Byrd, nobody has described the Antarctic and its
beauty and its treachery any better than Dick Byrd. His books are certainly
well worth, and his articles are certainly well worth reading for that. What
he wanted to do now was use advanced technologies of all kinds, centering
around the internal combustion engine to really break down and unlock the
secrets of Antarctica. He would use airplanes, he would use sledges, he would
bring scientists down again. And he would find ways to continue to promote
himself as a kind of intrepid explorer who did things and who took risks that
nobody else would take.
Q: Why was Byrd compelled to go to Advance Base?
LR: Well, I think it's very difficult to really come up with any kind of
categorical answers to why Dick Byrd decided that he wanted to man Advance Base
alone. He obviously had been talking about it for several years. He
approached a number of people with the idea and told him that of course they
would be there with him. He, in "Alone", he makes this statement that he first
thought about manning it with three people and then decided that that wasn't
feasible. Then he thought about two but two of them would constantly be at
each other's throats. So he finally decided that the only thing to do was to
man this by himself. There was some minimal scientific value to it in the
sense that the meterological conditions 123 miles down the Ross Ice Sheet ah,
the Ross Ice Shelf would be different than they would, far more volatile sea
ice conditions that you'd find at the edge of the, of the Ross Sea. But the
question as to whether or not it was worth risking, one, a person's life to man
a meterological station, and two, risk other people's lives in case that person
had to be rescued, this, I think was something -- Byrd of course, states, and
his stated opinion was that he wanted to get away from the hullabaloo. He had,
for almost ten years exhausted himself mounting first the North Pole flight and
then getting money for the transatlantic flight and then the first Byrd
expedition, when he flew to the South Pole. And he was exhausted. And he
wanted to get away to be by himself to replenish his spirit. And there is
evidence, very strong evidence that Byrd did come away with this with an
enhanced sense of spiritual peace and so on. After all, in 1940 he becomes
head of the No Foreign Wars Committee, he's titular head, honorary chairman.
But he obviously comes back from the ice, from his stay ah, alone with a
heightened sense of kind of mystic peace and so on. So I think all of those
elements were, were involved.
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