In 1938, Peter Oliver (Lyon House 1921-25) was a member of the last expedition before the Second World War to attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Sadly, the expedition failed in its attempt and Peter Oliver was killed in action in Burma in 1945 and never climbed Everest again.
The ice-axe used by Peter Oliver during the 1938 Everest expedition and his expedition diary are now held in the archives at Sherborne School.
Peter Roderick Oliver was born on 28 August 1907 at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India, to Major Edward William Oliver (1869-1929), a veterinary officer with the Indian Army, and Bessie Oliver (née Johnson) (1870-1946). Born almost in the shadow of the Himalayan range of mountains, it is said that snow-capped peaks were among Peter’s earliest recollections. In 1936, when describing Peter’s childhood, his mother said, ‘Peter was born in the mountain country. He loves mountains, and he always had a passion for climbing. As a boy of six or seven he would walk miles to look on the snows. Even then he was fast on his feet. As he grew a little older he would climb the tallest trees. I never stopped him. He was sure of himself. He used to go rock-climbing in Wales in his school holidays… Wherever he sees a hill or a mountain he is never happy until he has scaled it.’
Peter returned to England for his schooling, attending Gorse Cliff prep school at Boscombe in Bournemouth, and from September 1921 to December 1925 he was a pupil at Sherborne School, boarding at Lyon House run by housemaster A.H. Trelawny-Ross. At Sherborne Peter was a member of the Army Class, where he studied divinity, mathematics, history, English, French and drawing, and developed a love of art and literature. He was also a House Prefect at Lyon House and a Platoon-Sergeant in the School’s OTC. A photograph of a 16-year-old Peter taken at Sherborne in 1924 shows him as smaller and slighter than his contemporaries, but this did not prevent him from becoming a fine lightweight boxer and Captain of Boxing.
During Peter’s time at Sherborne Brigadier-General Charles Granville Bruce (1866-1939), a career-solider and mountaineer who led the 1922 and 1924 British Everest expeditions, visited the School on two occasions to give talks about his expeditions. Bruce’s niece was married to Sherborne’s headmaster Nowell Smith (1871-1961) and he had promised her that he would come to the School when he returned from Everest. In December 1922, Bruce gave a talk in the Big Schoolroom illustrated with photographs ‘of the magnificent white peaked ranges, scenes of the various stages of the journey, and of the work of the gallant band of mountaineers’, and it is not hard to imagine the impact this would have had on Peter’s imagination.
In February 1924, as part of a publicity scheme devised by the 1924 Everest expedition’s photographer Captain John Noel (1890-1989), a notice was published in The Shirburnian informing boys that if they wrote to Captain Noel and enclosed two penny stamps he would send them a commemorative postcard and stamp mailed from Everest Base Camp. Receiving a postcard from Everest must have been an exciting prospect and one can imagine Peter sending in his request to Captain Noel.
Brigadier-General Bruce returned to speak at Sherborne for a second time on 31 October 1925. In this talk he mentioned the deaths on Everest the previous year of George Mallory (1886-1924), a former master at Charterhouse, and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine (1902-1924), saying that ‘sad as the deaths of Irvine and Mallory seem at first thought, yet on considering it, one can see the glory of their climb into the unknown silence of the mountains, high above all other men.’ Peter could hardly have guessed that just 13 years later he would be part of a British Everest expedition team with Noel Odell (1890-1987) who was the last person to see Mallory and Irvine alive on their Everest ascent on 8 June 1924.
Following Brigadier-General Bruce’s example, Peter became a career-soldier. On leaving Sandhurst he obtained a commission in the 13th Frontier Force Rifles (Coke’s) and served the early part of his career in India and the North-west Frontier Province (now Pakistan). Peter spent his army leave mountaineering and made a number of notable ascents in the Himalayas, including in 1933 the second ascent of Trisul (23,360 feet) and in 1937 with Frank Smythe (1900-1949) the first ascent of Mana Peak (23,858 feet).
In 1936, Peter was selected to take part in a British Everest expedition led by Hugh Ruttledge (1884-1961). The team also included Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton, Percy Wyn-Harris, Edwin Kempson, Charles Warren, Edmund Wigram and James Gavin – six of whom had already been to Everest. Back at Sherborne there was great excitement when they heard about Peter’s selection, with his housemaster writing that ‘No boy in the House ever deserved this honour more, for the modest greatness of his character in a general way and the years of self-preparation for this high endeavour had made him fit for it.’
On 23 January 1936, Charles Pinsent (Abbeylands 1927-32), who was then serving with the 1st Battalion (Coke’s), 13th Frontier Force Rifles, wrote to R.S. Thompson at Sherborne School telling him that Peter Oliver was a member of the same battalion and is ‘completely mad on climbing’ and ‘you have only to show him a particularly nasty looking hill, and plenty of them abound in this part of the world, and he will be up it before many hours have passed. He gets ragged a lot about it in the battalion for we can never make out why he does it and what he does when he gets to the top.’
In January 1936, when interviewed by the Daily Express, Peter’s mother said, ‘Would I have stopped him going? No – not even if I could. It is his greatest ambition. And I have no right to order his life. Besides, I have faith in him. I know that he would not take unnecessary risks, though I know, too, that he would never shirk the needful risk. In any case, it is in the hands of God and I am a fatalist… The expedition will start from Kalimpong about March 8. I shall not hear from him after that. I am having some special foot-warmers made for him – rather like bed socks, except that both feet go into one sock. You see, although even on the highest reaches they must sleep in their clothes, they have to take off their boots, if only to thaw them.’ Mrs Oliver also read out parts of Peter’s last letter in which he described his preparations for the expedition: ‘Physically, I have to fatten up, and perhaps strengthen my wrists and hands; mentally, to develop calmness; and finally to provide myself with every available comfort. As Frank Smythe says, only a sybarite will climb Mount Everest. It is good, I think, that you are behind me in this enterprise, and don’t have your former feelings of horror. It is a cold, hard fight, and not mountaineering for pleasure… but it will be the greatest fun, with good companions. We must lay our visiting cards on the top – must, because it is the fifth attempt. Personal ambition will be a great spur to do well… I should like to be the sparrow carried up by the eagle to fly the winning hundred feet.’
Unfortunately, an early monsoon and heavy snowfall resulted in the expedition failing to reach the summit of Everest. News that the expedition had been unsuccessful was relayed to Sherborne where Peter’s housemaster wrote ‘it was with heartfelt sympathy that I read of the bitter disappointment they had to face when wholly unexpected weather conditions made the effort useless. I can only hope he may have another chance and better luck before long.’
Peter did not have to wait long for another go at Everest and was selected for the 1938 expedition. Led by Bill Tilman (1898-1977), the team also included Charles Warren, Peter Lloyd, Frank Smythe, Noel Odell and Eric Shipton. An editorial in The Times on 10 May 1938 described the team as ‘an efficient, tenacious band, impressively small in numbers for, and with no illusions about, the exacting mountaineering mission ahead. A prospect of immortality will not deflect them from realities. Their past record among the Himalayan giants has put them in a class apart; some of them are veterans even in regard to Everest.’
As he prepared to set out, Peter wrote to his housemaster at Sherborne, saying ‘It is very pleasant to know that Sherborne wishes me good luck; and as far as anything can inspire one’s slow, unwilling legs high up I am sure that the interest of Sherborne will… To sum up, this is a small, lightly equipped and mobile expedition with everything unessential cut out. Though we are rather earlier the weather does not seem any colder or worse. One trudges, rather heavily, over the honey-coloured plains or over the brown and chocolate hills; one stops, as before, at the white-washed villages and surrounded by incredibly dirty Tibetans, drinks a cup or so of their excellent, cool barley beer, called chang. Overhead is the same blue sky and to the south the same glittering mountains. Kangchenjunga, “The Five Treasuries of the Snow,” has mostly been in sight and occasionally the east face of Everest… I hope that all is well at Sherborne. The summer term is a pleasant time, when the trees are green and the ices are pink. I still remember that good one you stood me last year when Glennie or somebody was hitting up runs…’
Peter took with him on the 1938 Everest expedition a Charles Letts notebook with a waxed cloth and cardboard case. The red leather-bound notebook was evidently purchased by Peter for the 1936 expedition because stamped in gold lettering on the front cover are the words ‘MOUNT EVEREST EXPEDITION 1936. P.R. OLIVER’. Inside the notebook Peter wrote, possibly with an eye to publication, a diary of his experiences during the expedition.
Peter’s diary begins on 1 March 1938 at Kalimpong in the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal, where the expedition team gathered at the home of Norman and Bunty Odling. His first entry reads:
‘It would not be easy to find a better kicking off place than the Odlings house in Kalimpong with its pleasant country house atmosphere. Everyone is here in Kalimpong except Frank Smythe who arrives later. The mental atmosphere is extraordinarily serene, more so than in 1936. Everest is seldom mentioned. The party I think has a fatalistic attitude towards the mountain; it is felt that there is no particular hope of success nor any particular fear of failure.’
After crossing ‘the brown swelling hills of windy Tibet ‘ on 18 March, Peter caught his first sight of Everest on 19 March – ‘far distant & not very impressive’.
On 6 April 1938 the team reached Rongbuk Monastery, which served as a stopping-off point near to the base of the north side of Mount Everest. Here they were welcomed by the monks who provided them with a large meal after which the elderly head lama Ngawang Tenzin Norbu gave his blessing for their expedition. Peter recorded in his diary on 9 April that ‘The old man was full of life and interest in us. He told us to be careful and said that an earthquake in February had altered the route. He asked our ages and if our hearts were pure. Each one of us had to undergo a short questionnaire. He (and the other lamas) laughed most heartily when Bill (through Karma Paul) said that we would all become lamas if we thought that such excellent food was provided every day in the monastery.’ In return for their hospitality the expedition team presented the monastery with a fine altar cloth.
Throughout the diary Peter recorded the local flora and fauna, including tracks alleged to have been made by the abominable snowman! While staying at Rongbuk Monastery Peter picked some wild flowers which he pressed in his diary, where they remain today.
Peter also made sketches of the landscape and local people, took photographs and shot cine film footage (now held by the BFI). He was a talented artist and his illustrations were used in a number of books on Himalayan mountaineering, including Hugh Ruttledge’s Everest: the Unfinished Adventure (1937).
When not trekking or climbing, Peter spent his time playing chess and reading. His love of literature apparently stemmed back to his schooldays at Sherborne, as he later revealed to his former housemaster – ‘When I was at Sherborne I was taken to the water, and even if I did not drink deep I did at least wet my lips.’ Peter’s 1938 expedition reading included The Constant Nymph, Adam Bede, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and some Shakespeare. He records in his diary his delight on Easter Monday when the post was brought up to Camp I on Everest and included a copy of The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse!
The expedition was unfortunately blighted by the monsoon breaking five weeks earlier than expected, which resulted in a very limited window of opportunity to attempt the summit of Everest. On 8 June Peter described in his diary ‘a strenuous day from N Face Camp, round the corner of North Peak and into the little glacier curve under the western slopes of the Col.’ The route to N. Col West camp ‘was rather tortuous and one has to climb steadily… Noel Odell got very tired, mostly because of the burning glass heat of the airless trough we were in, snow surfaces reflecting the glare on every side.’ On arriving at the camp they were told that Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton had started from Camp V on an attempt and that Peter Lloyd and Bill Tilman were going up after them. Peter wrote ‘I guessed then somehow that my own ambitions to “go high” were likely to be unsatisfied.’ To compound Peter’s sense of despair, Noel Odell told him that it was the anniversary of his attempt in 1924 to locate Mallory and Irvine.
Later, Peter recorded in his diary his bitter disappointment at not being selected to ‘go high’:
‘As we went “light” up the western slopes of the N Col I had to leave my diary behind at Camp “N Col West” (like a signal box!) and so has occurred this 11 days break in the writing of it. They have been the most important and final days of the expedition: and all we have achieved happened then. To my great disappointment I was not in the fun; doubly disappointing as I was well and fit and I think stronger than Bill and Peter Lloyd, who were the second party to go high. Odell, Warren and myself just “missed the boat”, the short spell of good weather. The other two, perhaps being less selfish than me didn’t seem to mind much. I did.’
On 17 June, with the end of his army leave in sight, Peter left the expedition and began to make his way back to Kalimpong, deciding to keep his beard to show the Odlings. On 25 June he took a last distant photograph of Everest ‘before the clouds came and overcast the sky completely.’
This was to be Peter’s last attempt to summit Mount Everest. The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, followed by the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1950, meant that the next attempt to reach the summit of Everest was not made until 1952, with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally achieving the highest peak in the world in 1953.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Oliver was killed in action near Meiktila in Burma (now Myanmar) on 22 February 1945, aged 37. He was ahead of the main divisional column near Meiktila when he realised that the leading vehicles were taking the wrong track and heading towards a strong Japanese force. He immediately set off in his jeep to head the stray vehicles back to the right track but ran into the enemy himself and, together with his driver and orderly, they engaged the Japanese with rifle fire which served to warn the column of the danger that they were heading towards. Having achieved this objective, Peter tried to regain the jeep so that they could withdraw but was hit by machine gun fire and killed instantly.
Peter was buried at Meiktila the following morning and his adjutant made sure he was facing the high hills he loved. His body was later exhumed and reburied at Taukkyan War Cemetery in Myanmar (Plot 20, row G, grave no. 13) where the inscription on his headstone includes a quote from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: ‘He loved chivalrie, trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie’.
Tributes to Peter included one from the General commanding his division who wrote, ‘I was so pleased to have him with me. He was a true son of Sherborne, a fine leader, modest and a great gentleman’, and from his Everest climbing partner Frank Smythe who said ‘Peter Oliver died as he himself would have wished – helping others.’
In Peter’s memory, in 1946 his mother presented to Lyon House at Sherborne School a silver cup that Peter had won as a small boy at Lucknow in 1914, with the inscription ‘In Memory of Peter Roderick Oliver, Lieut.-Colonel. Killed in Burma on February 24th, 1945’. Peter’s name is also inscribed on the School’s War Memorial Staircase and the Lyon House War Memorial.
In 1975, Peter’s younger brother William Marcus Oliver (1909-1982) (Lyon House 1924-25) presented to Sherborne School Peter’s 1938 Everest diary together with the Swiss-made Andenmatten Bros. ice-axe he used during the expedition. Both of which now form an important part of the Mount Everest story.
Rachel Hassall
Archivist, Sherborne School
- Peter Roderick Oliver (1907-1945), Sherborne School Roll of Honour
- Lieutenant Colonel Peter Roderick Oliver (Commonwealth War Graves)
- Peter Roderick Oliver archive, Sherborne School (pdf)
- Correspondence, diaries. literary papers, and photographs of Lt.-Col. P.R. Oliver, 1921-1944, with diaries and miscellaneous papers of his mother Elizabeth Oliver, 1905-1946 (ref. MSS.24656-24720, National Library of Scotland)
- Peter Oliver (g 25): mountaineer and soldier by John Harden, OS Record, 2011 (pdf)
- H.W. Tilman, Mount Everest 1938 (CUP, 1948) (Internet Archive)
- The first film of Tibet, by Captain John Noel from the 1922 British expedition to Mount Everest, which was led by Brigadier General Charles Bruce (BFI)
- Footage from the ‘Mount Everest Expedition 1936’, which was led by Hugh Ruttledge (BFI)
- Film directed by Peter Oliver of his expedition to Garhwal, or the ‘Valley of the Flowers’ with Frank Smythe, in 1937 (BFI)
- Amateur footage directed by Peter Oliver documenting the ‘Mount Everest Expedition 1938’, which was led by Bill Tilman (BFI)
- Colour film (narrated by Meredith Edwards) telling the story of the ‘Mount Everest Expedition 1953’, which saw the first successful ascent of the mountain (BFI)