As part of the Museum’s oral history programme, we recently carried out an interview with Major (Retd) Tony Lomax.
Tony joined Boys Service from a children’s home in 1961, aged 15 and served for 40 years. He was deployed to various locations including Aden in 1966, Belize, and loan service to Brunei in 1979 where he undertook a Jungle Instructor’s course and led a party of Malay soldiers up to Everest base camp. He also had postings to Soest, Verden, Hohne, the Falkland Islands in 1986, the Gulf as part of Op Granby, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. Tony became a Yeoman of Signals in 1973 which he described as one of his proudest moments.
This extract from his interview focuses on the expedition Tony undertook to Mount Everest and his role as 2IC and team medic.
“The good thing about Brunei for me - because I kept fairly fit – was to be 2IC of a trip to the base camp of Everest. Everest is daunting. You start off and you spend two days at Kathmandu to acclimatize, because Kathmandu is at 3,000 feet. The Brunei’s had never seen snow in their life. They were rolling in it, they were eating it! And also typical Brits, when we got to the base camp, I stripped down to shorts and a running vest and the Malays around me were all in Puffer Parkers and everything else.
I was team medic because I was first aid trained. The night before you hit the base camp at 18,500 feet, you have altitude sickness. I had to send two of the Malays down during the course of the trip with altitude sickness. If you don't, then your kidneys will flood and you’ll die. That's when you get a searing headache, this pounding headache all the way up to the base camp.
At 12,000 feet tucked into the rocks - and you don't know how they did it - is a monastery of Tengboche. Talk about austere. My goodness, how they built it to start with. Everything is portrait rich. You'd go through the mountains, little villages, and you'd find Gurkhas sat cross legged with a handheld Singer sowing machine, quite bizarre.
When you come back down, Superman! The OC of the trip and myself start racing each other down the hill, running. You think you could jump houses, you really do. You just, with that oxygen coming back, you just think there's no stopping you. Well you catch on quickly enough and don't do it for too long!”
