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Below are actual quotes taken from the official
Wally Herbert website
that we find rather odd... |
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"...'the greatest polar explorer of our time',
according to Sir Ranulph Fiennes"
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What did Wally explore? No matter; Fiennes himself failed numerous times to reach the North Pole,
ending when he cut off his fingertips. Is he an
explorer? He says he is not. Yet he
was quoted asserting Henson could never have reached the
Pole. How would he know? (Photo, right, from
MIND OVER MATTER) |
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"...a 'phenomenon'
according to the late Lord Shackleton" |
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Shackelton, a dramatic failure in classic British Polar
style, died years before Wally was born. So
apparently one of Shackelton's descendents said this? But does that
count? |
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"... we should
have him stuffed..." says Prince Charles
| Many people are interested in stuffing Wally. Please donate
money to the "Stuff Herbert Fund";
contact this website for details. |
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What does modest Wally say about Wally? |
| (from his website keywords)...says he is an
'Artist, Painter, Portrait, Writer, Writing, Author,
Guinness Book Of Records, Record Breaker, Record, Who's Who,
Last Great Journey On Earth, Rear-Admiral Robert E. Peary,
Dr. Fredrick A. Cook, Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, Sir Ernest
Shackleton, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Captain Roald
Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, Peary, Cook, Nansen,
Herbert, Wally, Wally Herbert, Complex Web Design"
Wow. |
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(above) Herbert on his 1969 polar camping
marathon. |
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British man-haulers on the Capt. Scott death march to the South Pole in
1913. Scott's bungling was much criticized during the investigations
that followed this tragedy. Scott is nevertheless a hero for reasons
only the English can explain. |
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18 of
Shackelton's men worked for a week to move 2 boats 7 miles. Shackelton
was a miserable failure, yet he is loved in Britain for his efforts to
save his men. |
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Herbert concocted his "evidence" that Peary failed to reach the Pole
through his description of Peary's diary. This is an old trick that is
used by politicians, and by lawyers in court. Basically you do not let
the other side see the evidence, but instead give them your
interpretation or "spin" on it. What Herbert did with the Peary diary
in the US National Archives was an egregious mischaracterization of an
historical document. To repair this damage the entire Peary diary is
being prepared for web viewing so that this dirty trick can never be
attempted again. (V. R. 2002)
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Did the National Geographic Society (NGS) know that Herbert had a correspondence
history with Cook-Peary vendetta chieftain Helene Vetters? No? Here is
a summary of a Cook Society file on the writer the NGS choose to study Peary. Don't
laugh, now. We wouldn't want Gil Grosvenor to feel stupid, right?
| COOK SOCIETY FILE: Herbert, Wally,
1966, 1968-1972 note: he was head of the British Trans-Arctic
Expedition. The purpose of the expedition was to
retrace Cook's route from N. W. Greenland...to the Northern tip of Axel
Heiberg Island correspondence between H. Levin and W. Herbert,
re: the above expedition, which Levin forwarded to H. Vetter
correspondence between Herbert and others clippings by or about Herbert
H. Vetter's notes excerpts from Across the Top of the World, Herbert's
book, re: the British Trans-Arctic Expedition In Amundsen's Track on the
Axel Heiberg Glacier, by Herbert, and autographed
by him to H. Vetter, 1966 (reprinted from Geographical Journal,
vol. 129, part 4, December, 1963 |
As bizarre as all this sounds, it really happened.
1) First, the NGS was upset about the Peary damning TV movie, Cook & Peary, then hired a
writer who schmoozed with Helene Vetters (Cook Society) to
investigate Peary. (akin to letting the anti-Peary Cook Society
investigate Peary)
2) Herbert was paid by the NGS and, making the most of this opportunity,
tried to topple Peary with much more than a mere magazine article. He
produced a full length pseudo-history book that appeared to be based upon
research.
3) Noose of Laurels was on the way to publication when the NGS had no
choice but to print the Herbert article in a 1988 issue. (They say,
figuratively, "he put a gun to their head") BANG! Peary had been shot down
with a weapon given him by the geniuses at the NGS.
4) When Noose of Laurels came out it delighted English people (as
well as the Cook Society), outraged Gil Grosvenor of the NGS, perverted
American history, and alienated numerous people who had innocently helped
Herbert.
Wally Herbert is a British citizen. He
realized that if he pushed Peary off the American North Pole pedestal he
could claim his own 1969 (British) dog sledge trip as first to reach the
North Pole. So he wrote a book comprised of a mass of slurs & innuendos
towards Peary (his mother dressed him as a girl, he was too obsessed with
fame, he took the "unreliable witness" Henson (a Negro) to the Pole, Peary
was a "weather beaten old fanatic, etc.) and a theory that the expedition
drifted west. It was all sensational, but wrong.
How could Herbert try to repudiate the findings of the Royal
Geographical Society of Great Britain from 75 years ago? Think about
that for a moment. Those men had first hand access to Peary, Bartlett, and
all their records. Everyone knew Bartlett had traveled to within
133 nautical miles of the Pole. Peary left Bartlett's camp for the North
Pole in good weather with their most skilled Eskimos, his reliable (but Negro) assistant, with dogs in the best
physical condition, plenty of supplies, etc.
Peary and his elite team had
let all the advance teams, including Bartlett's, work themselves to exhaustion building a virtual
highway over the Arctic Ocean with igloo camps loaded with supplies. All Peary's team had to
do was dash (no, not "dark", Wally) the final bit. It was a
great plan, and by all accounts it worked. How can anyone 75 years later
"disprove" all this? Is it because there is no one left alive to tell Wally
he's dead wrong?
Continued...
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