Letter from beyond mentions flag
By James Breig
If you had to write a letter to your spouse and child that wouldn’t be read until after you died, what would you say?
In January 1912, that question was faced by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, a British explorer, when his expedition to the South Pole failed in two ways:
*He was not, as he had hoped, the first explorer to find that spot. Norwegians had been there a month earlier, marking their spot with a silken flag. “All day-dreams must go,” Scott jotted in his diary.
*Second, he and his companions realized they were doomed to die from exposure and starvation in the Antarctic.
As he and his men grew weaker, Scott began writing a long letter to his wife, Kathleen, and their two-year-old son, Peter. Instead of beginning with “Dear Kathleen,” he started with “To: My widow.”
Speaking across thousands of miles to his “dearest darling,” Scott was blunt: “We are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through….I shall like you to know how much you have meant to me.”
He advised her to find comfort in their son, whom he referred to as “the boy,” and hoped she would teach him to “believe in a God; it is comforting.” Perhaps he was sharing his own spiritual feelings as his life ebbed.
Then the explorer turned to a flag, the British Union Jack, one of the few objects he had with him that he could leave to her and Peter.
“There is a piece of the Union flag I put up at the South Pole in my private kit bag,” he wrote. “Give a small piece…to the King [George V] and a small piece to Queen Alexandra [the queen mother] and keep the rest [as] a poor trophy for you!”
Scott’s final words included, “What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. What tales you would have for the boy, but oh what a price to pay – to forfeit the sight of your dear dear face.”
When a memorial service was held in London to mark his passing, the flags outside British schools were lowered to half-staff.
(To read Scott’s entire letter, go to www.lettersofnote.com and search for “flag.”)