and his second descended the gully as fast as possible, but Thomas was dead. The others rescued Barratt, who was suffering from shock.

The rope had broken about fifteen feet from the waist knot and near the break it was badly frayed. It appeared that a hold had given way and as he fell the rope had been sawn through by a sharp flake, of which there were a number in that place. The rope was nylon in good condition. The fall itself would not have killed him; he had only thirty feet of rope out and Barratt could have taken the strain; it was most unfortunate that the flake should have been there to catch the rope when he fell. There have been other similar accidents: a rope caught behind a flake and broke on Gimmer and the leader was killed. A man may fall a hundred feet and survive if the rope holds, but only a few feet can mean death if there is a sharp-edged rock in the way.

Thomas' death was the first fatal accident to a team member. At the inquest (the family came from Penmachno) the father said that no one attached any blame to Lees. He said how happy his son had been in the team and that he had thought the world of his N.C.O. He was very kind and Lees was deeply moved. He felt his responsibility heavily and the tragedy had a profound effect on him. Superficially he become hypercritical of rock; the safest climb - a veritable caravan route - would be pronounced loose and we would have to go elsewhere. Fundamentally he was subdued and moody. I think it was from about that time that he started being bad-tempered with me on climbs.

I was a kind of receptable for his emotions. I knew these tragedies only at second-hand. He insulated me almost completely against the misery and frequent horror of his job. When he told me about accidents I was more concerned with his reaction than with the casualty. He was unimaginative, even - in this one particular - phlegmatic. Yet he was something of a hypochondriac and terrified of the slightest pain. Had he been like me, possessed of a vivid imagination and compassion that was too great for my capacity, he would have become ill or resigned his job. As it was, without being in the least dispassionate, he took shock after shock through the ensuing years (with this exception of Taff Thomas) without any apparent effect. I suppose he had a natural defence mechanism which shut out grief and horror from his consciousness. And except in this strange habit of cursing me when I led a hard pitch, fear was unknown to him, and that wasn't fear for himself.

One afternoon in September Chris Briggs telephoned Valley from the Pen y Gwryd hotel to ask if the team would assist in a rescue. The sound of falling rock, and shouts for help, had been heard coming from the east buttress of Lliwedd.

At 5.5 p.m. Lees and his advance party met Briggs and six civilian climbers at a pre-arranged rendezvous at Llyn Llydaw. The R.A.F. pushed on towards the cliff, meeting on the way tourists who gave them confused reports, of which the most feasible was that a man was hanging unconscious on a rope half-way up the east buttress.

When they reached the foot of the cliff they held a shouted conversation with rescuers who were already at the scene of the accident. These last asked for a stretcher to be taken round to the summit. It was raining steadily and the task of man-handling the stretcher up the gully at the side of the cliff was strenuous and highly dangerous. There was the constant danger that dislodged boulders would fall on men climbing below.

At the top the rain stopped, to be replaced by a bitter wind. They were now in the cloud, and it was starting to get dark. Continue to Page 7