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Jim Gavin, was one of the last surviving climbers to attempt Mount Everest before the second world war. A capable skier and sailor, he was also a distinguished soldier, who made a dramatic wartime escape from the Japanese, and later worked for the Special Operations Executive. Gavin was born in Chile, and educated at St Peter's school, in Santiago, and Uppingham school, Rutland. After the Royal Military Academy and a commission in the Royal Engineers, he read mechanical engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1931, and took up climbing with the university mountaineering club in the Bernese Oberland |
He climbed with some of the best of his day - including Colin
Kirkus and Frank Smythe - and his physical toughness so impressed Smythe that he
suggested to Hugh Ruttledge, leader of the 1936 Everest expedition, that the
relatively young lieutenant would be an asset on the mountain. Gavin returned to Chamonix in 1940, having temporarily given up his commission in the Royal Engineers to join a Scots Guards skiing battalion. The plan was to enter and support Finland - then at war with the Soviet Union - via neutral Sweden; in the event, it came to nothing, and the skiers left in a hurry as the Germans took control of France. Gavin then embarked on a sabotage mission to Norway, but after his submarine was badly damaged by depth charges, the expedition was abandoned and Gavin moved to the mountain warfare school at Loch Ailort. In 1941, he was sent to Singapore to open a commando training centre and launch a sabotage campaign in Malaya against the advancing Japanese. But little was accomplished, and he found himself, as a valued officer, with the chance to get out as Singapore fell in early 1942.
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