knowledge and the courage to use it, men would have lived who did, in fact, die. In his early days in mountain rescue he found that men were not only unwilling to risk applying medical treatment, but that they had an innate horror of approaching a corpse or even an open wound. There was, in fact, among mountain rescue teams, a horror of blood.

Dattner set out to accustom his men to death, to open wounds, and to the more dramatic forms of First Aid. Every member of his team had to use a hypodermic on him, in preparation for injecting a genuine casualty with morphia. He found that novices would faint while watching others do this: poor preparation for work they might be expected to perform one day in order to save a man's life.

Another of his training innovations were the sessions which came to be known as Dattner's Sewing Parties. He cut himself deliberately, then every member of his team would be required to insert stitches in the wound. When he found that the team were squeamish in the face of death, he solved the problem by visits to a police mortuary with lectures laid on.

It was inevitable that he should become the target of considerable criticism, both from the medical expert and from the layman. He never concerned himself with the latter, but he asserts that even the experts can find no effective alternative for his methods. There is, he says, no substitute for the real thing.

Dattner was a bachelor, and during his time at Kinloss mountain rescue became his dominant interest. The team was in poor shape when he came to it and he gave almost everything to pulling it round. Almost everything - because mountain rescue is not a full-time job for the officer in charge. Dattner may have owed some of his popularity to the fact that he was a good signals officer. Men who dedicate themselves to mountain rescue to the exclusion of everything else can become unbearable: narrow-minded men who refuse to recognise any other baby but their own.

But, despite this ability to spread himself, it was at mountain rescue that he excelled. He was extremely conscientious, far harder on himself than on his men, but he was hard on them too. Before he had them fully trained, and while still poorly equipped, particularly with boots, they were involved in a rescue on Skye: an operation which covered three days and was carried out on the ridges and in remote corries under most exacting conditions.

It was June 1952 and a schoolmaster called Phillips was staying at Glen Brittle post office. Also there, with a client, was the Lakeland guide, Jim Cameron. Phillips was fifty-four, a strong healthy man who went swimming in the sea every morning before breakfast. In the course of conversation Cameron had warned him of the dangers of solo ridge-walking. Phillips agreed that he was inexperienced and decided to have tuition from Cameron in the Lake District the following year.

On Jun 12th the weather was bad. Some members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club met Phillips alone on Sgurr Dearg. About to go down themselves in the face of deteriorating conditions, they warned Phillips against going on. He carried no rope and was wearing shorts. He replied that he knew what he was doing and that nothing would happen to him - a retort that has sent many an expert, blushing furiously, on his way.

But Phillips didn't return to the post office that night.
The search started next morning. Jim Cameron was with a party in Coire na Continue to Page 3