Kinloss and Leuchars - the Scottish teams - have one advantage over Valley: they don't have to search for and rescue children to the extent that the Welsh team is involved. There are young people undergoing instruction in the Highlands, but Scottish education authorities and other leaders seem to be more aware of the potential dangers of their own mountains than are the Welsh and English. Young people learning to climb in Scotland tend to be older than those in Wales and the Lake District, and are more often under the leadership of competent mountaineers. Of course this is not always so, and errors of judgement have the same result in the Highlands as elsewhere, the difference being that in Scotland the margin for error is narrower. This is the result of several allied factors: weather, inaccessibility, hard winter conditions, and bigger mountains.

There are fourteen peaks over three thousand feet high in Wales; in Scotland there are over three hundred of them, and several of these top four thousand feet. There are comparatively few roads for the mountain massifs; distances are great and the terrain is often trackless, extremely rough. It may take many hours for the survivor of an accident to make his way out and for the rescue parties to return. In the meantime the injured man may die of exposure. Sometimes there are no survivors to go for help, or they may die on the way.

In winter when severe snow conditions prevail at the same time as arctic weather, rescue is a hard business, and a protracted search considerably harder. The men of the Scottish teams have to possess boundless enthusiasm and endurance.

Inevitably one recalls the Lancaster crash on Beinn Eighe but it has been explained already that several factors may result in a team being at a low standard for a time, and it is remarkable that when a team his a low spot, the men will be found to build up up again. So, at about the same time as Lees came to Wales, a young squadron-leader, Dave Dattner, took over as officer in charge of the Kinloss team in 1952.

A photograph taken at that time shows a darkly handsome young man with a sensitive mouth, scowling warily at the photographer, but the threat of aggression in the eyes could be tempered by what looks like a glint of humour. However, one suspects this would be more cynical than gay. It is the face of a visionary and artist; not a face one would expect to meet in the services. He inspired unswerving devotion in his team, and respect and affection in his colleagues outside mountain rescue. This must be a tribute to his charm, otherwise - for his actions and his excessive individualism - he would have been branded as 'awkward' or 'bloody-minded'. These are terms one never heard used of Dattner although, unless there is a strong redeeming feature, the services more than most abhor the individualist.

Some of his theories and practice of mountain rescue instruction were revolutionary. He conducted for many years (and is still doing so) a lone crusade against one of the little-publicised hazards of rescue: the fear on the part of the rescuers of doing anything to a casualty that my result in death. Such people, he says, prefer to bring down a safe' corpse (alive when found) rather than run the risk of giving treatment more normally administered by a doctor. He argues that since doctors are seldom available on a rescue, all members of mountain rescue teams should be able and willing to inject morphia or sew up wounds. He is adamant that there have been occasions where, had the rescuers possessed more medical Continue to Page 2