"It was the birthplace of civilization, now a barren and exotic landscape, alluring in its mystery." "For thousands of years, the Middle East had guarded its secrets." "But by the 19th century it had become a battleground for competing empires eager for political control and archeological treasure." "It was a time when archeology was intertwined with espionage." "When politics was called "The Great Game"." "Into this arena stepped two remarkable Britons a young adventurer named Austin Henry Layard, who uncovered the treasures of a fabulous lost civilization," "and a brilliant politician named Gertrude Bell, the "brains" behind Lawrence of Arabia." "Both would follow their dreams into the desert changing it forever." "In the spring of 1840, an intrepid young Englishman found his way to the ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, now part of Iraq." "He was on his way towards India to make his fortune." "But there was something about this desert that caught hold of him and wouldn't let him go." "More than 2,000 years ago, two mighty empires had ruled this land:" "Babylonia and Assyria." "Their cities were fabled for their opulence." "Their power rivaled only by each other." "The Assyrians were fearsome warriors." "Eight centuries before Christ, they had marched on the Israelites." "City after city fell before them." "Even Jerusalem was under siege." "Thousands of captives were taken, immortalized as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." "And all this was written in the Bible." "But now almost all traces of these great civilizations had disappeared." "There was nothing here but desert as far as the eye could see." "Yet in this wasteland, Austin Henry Layard saw the chance of a lifetime." "In the decade to come, he would uncover the secrets of this barren desert, and reveal the truth in a Bible story." "When he saw the mounds and saw this area, he saw opportunity." "He saw opportunity for fame, and he was looking as a way to make his name and his life." "From his earliest childhood," "Austin Henry Layard was an unusual young man." "Most of his youth was spent in Florence where he fell in love with that ancient city's history and art." "Formal schooling was not for him, but he knew almost every painting in the galleries and churches of the city." "The rest of his time he spent dreaming, lost in stories of adventure." "His favorite was a book only recently translated into English." "The work in which I took the greatest delight was the Arabian Nights." "My imagination became so much excited by it, that I thought and dreamt of little else." "The Arabian Nights have had no little influence upon my life and career." "To them, I attribute that love of travel and adventure, which took me to the East." "Ever since Napoleon rediscovered the wonders of Egypt at the turn of the century," "Europeans had been captivated by the exoticism of the East." "From the time he was a boy," "Austin Henry Layard fell under its spell." "His family tried to make a lawyer of him." "Layard hated the law, but he stuck it out and passed his exams at 22." "Casting about, he learned of a possible job in Ceylon, a British colony halfway around the world." "It was the chance he had been waiting for." "Layard found another traveler to accompany him in the overland route through the Ottoman Empire." "In 1839, this was a journey well off the beaten track, which could take more than a year." "The two men wore Turkish dress to assure safe passage, and lived out of their saddlebags." "They made their way down into Turkey, the gateway to another world." "This was my first glimpse of Eastern life." "The booths in the covered alleys of the bazaar;" "the veiled women gliding through the crowd;" "the dim and mysterious light of the place." "I felt myself in a new world, a world of which I had dreamt since my earliest childhood." "When Austin Henry Layard reached the desert, he was living his deepest fantasy." "You know how sometimes you go to a place, and it is you, and you just fit, and you feel comfortable?" "I don't think Layard, at that stage in his life, was comfortable in Victorian England." "But when he got to Petra, in particular, where he was robbed and had a terrible time, he felt at home because he felt a kinship with these people who were very volatile and friendly and outgoing like he was." "Petra also satisfied Layard's fascination with history." "The city's fading grandeur carved from solid rock." "But there were other even more ancient ruins, and these proved more intriguing still." "One day on his way through the Tigris and Euphrates valley, he caught sight of something extraordinary" "rising out of the flat desert plain." "I saw for the first time the great Mound of Nimrud against the clear sky." "The impression it made upon me was one never to be forgotten." "Layard vowed that some day he would return to investigate the mysterious mound." "In the meantime, the romantic young Englishman" "lost all interest in continuing on to Ceylon." "For a year, he lived with the Baktiari nomads in Persia, whose way of life had not changed for 3,000 years." "And it was I think one reason he became the archeologist he did." "He learned how to improvise on the spot;" "he learned how to adjust circumstances, how to live in discomfort;" "and above all, how to interact with these people." "His meager funds now growing short, the enterprising Layard used his facility with different cultures to get a job with the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire." "For three years, he served as a kind of roving reporter." "He was really a secret agent." "A lot of his work was very sensitive, and negotiating with these sorts of people." "And the skills he gained were priceless, but it is only a certain sort of person who will gain those skills." "Very outgoing, very entrepreneurial, in a way." "Never at a loss." "That's where Layard was brilliant." "Layard's new skills were just the right mix for his next assignment." "A new kind of conflict was heating up in the Middle East." "Ever since Napoleon had brought back treasures from Egypt, the great powers had been on the lookout for archeological booty." "The idea of museums, temples of the muses, was one which was capturing the imagination of 19th century Europeans." "The British, the French, the Germans were all building these palaces in which to place° ° ° well, what are they going to place there?" "Like Layard, the French recognized the potential of the strange mounds rising out of the Middle Eastern desert." "Now they had begun to dig, and at Khorsabad they were uncovering some very interesting sculptures." "There was certainly a competition between the French and the British as to who could find the biggest treasures in order to stock the museums in Paris and London." "And, in fact, newspaper articles and magazines at that time actually described these finds as "Trophies of empire."" "To catch up with the French, Layard persuaded the British ambassador to fund a trial excavation at his mound at Nimrud." "Within weeks, he was ready to begin, instructed to keep a low profile." "On the 8th of November 1845, having secretly procured a few tools, and carrying with me a variety of guns, spears and other weapons," "I declared that I was going to hunt wild boars in a neighboring village, and floated down the Tigris on a small raft." "It was dark by the time Layard arrived at the mound." "Five years had passed since he'd first laid eyes on it." "His head was filled with excitement." "He found it almost impossible to sleep." "Visions of palaces underground, of sculptured figures and endless inscriptions floated before me." "After forming plan after plan for removing the earth and extricating these treasures," "I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers from which I could find no outlet." "At dawn the next morning, the resourceful young Englishman assembled his team and set to work." "He had no experience, very little money, and no guarantee of success." "He really had no expertise in what he was doing, except his natural talent." "And he was rushing because the French were competing, and their influence over the Turks could mean that his license to be digging would quickly be cut off." "And he needed a good find quickly because he knew that's what would bring the support from the British government, or from the British Museum, from the British community to enable him to go on." "Amazingly, on the very first day of digging, Layard hit pay dirt." "A piece of alabaster appeared above the soil." "We could not remove it, and on digging downward it proved to be the upper part of a large slab." "The men shortly uncovered ten more." "It was evident that the top of a chamber had been discovered." "Digging along the walls of the chamber, within weeks the men uncovered a series of splendid sculptured panels." "Layard was captivated by their beauty." "But he knew they wouldn't be enough to get the British Museum to fund him." "He was looking for the spectacular sculpture, which would dazzle the public, and give him fame in London." "I say this not out of a criticism of Layard." "He was penniless." "This was his way to fame and fortune." "And he knew it." "A few months later," "Layard was on his way to visit a local sheik when two horsemen caught up with him." ""Hasten, O Bey," they cried." ""Hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself."" "Rising out of the earth was a gigantic head." "The workmen were terrified of this colossus they called Nimrod, and ran off to spread the news." "But Layard was elated." "He'd only been digging a few months, and here was treasure the French would envy." "Unfortunately, the resulting uproar gave the Ottoman Turks the excuse they'd been looking for to shut down the dig." "Layard suspected the hand of the French." "Quietly he kept a few men on who unearthed two gigantic sculptures" "strange and awe inspiring." "With his knowledge of art history," "Layard knew that he had found an entirely new style of art." "The British Museum agreed and finally gave him the money he needed." "A year after he'd begun, Turkish permission in hand," "Layard launched full scale excavations at Nimrud." "Every day produced some new discovery." "My Arabs entered with alacrity into the work, and felt almost as much interested in its results as I did myself." "Tunneling along the walls of what turned out to be a palace, they found hundreds of alabaster sculptures, some disintegrating from ancient fires." "Layard drew what he could, working from dawn until dusk." "In the evening, after the labor of the day," "I often sat at the door of my tent and gave myself up to the full enjoyment imparted to the senses by such scenes as these." "I live among the ruins, and dream of little else." "But still Layard had to face his biggest challenge." "Somehow he had to transport his treasures back to London." "It's quite one thing to dig up these large human headed lions or bas relief, some of which weighed several tons." "And quite another thing to take them back to London or Paris." "And this is where Layard was a genius he had learned to improvise." "He acquired the loyalty of the local people." "He got a cart built, and there were wonderful pictures in his books of luring these lions with ropes down on to one of the carts, and the famous occasion when the ropes broke and the lion fell like this." "And they thought it was broken, but it wasn't." "And the workmen burst into a wild dance." "And they towed this thing to the river." "And they built a raft of timber and supported it on inflated goatskins." "I watched the rafts until they disappeared, musing upon the strange destiny of their burdens." "After adorning the palaces of Assyrian kings, they had been buried unknown for centuries beneath the soil trodden by the Persians, the Greeks and the Arabs." "They were now to cross the most distance seas to be finally placed in a British museum." "1848." "The year of great revolutions in Europe is the year when all of the Assyrian stuff that Layard had discovered was first displayed in England, and it was a sensation." "He was lionized by society." "He became a public figure." "A young man who had gone out East and made good." "Look what he had bought for Britain." "Layard wrote a best seller about his adventures uncovering the impressive civilization of the Assyrians," "lost to history for more than 2,000 years." "But he struggled to understand the strange beasts he'd discovered, and which had taken London by storm." "This creature stood to either side of the doorway of an important location in the Assyrian world to guard the way in." "And that lion's body will tear you apart, and those wings of a bird of prey will overtake you, and that human head will out think you." "And believe me, the Assyrians believed that, and would have been suitably intimidated just as the British were suitably impressed by this extraordinary exotic creature that he brought back." "The treasures of Assyria were trophies of Empire." "But to many people, they were more." "In the secular 19th century, the historical validity of the Bible was under attack." "Were its stories true, or were they simply stories?" "Perhaps the answer could be found in the mounds of Mesopotamia." "With mounting public interest, the British Museum decided to fund a second expedition." "In 1849, Layard tackled a mound the French had given up on, near the banks of the Tigris River." "Tunneling deep inside, he uncovered indisputable evidence that would prove he had found Nineveh, the biblical capital of Assyria." "Nearly two miles of sculptured alabaster panels proclaiming the bloody conquests of its kings." "A great library which would unlock the lost history of the Assyrians." "And most extraordinary of all, evidence of the bloody siege of the Israelite city of Lachish that was depicted in the Bible." "To dig and dig and dig, then to uncover what you come to recognize both by the images and then corroborated by the cuneiform descriptions is the siege of Lachish," "The conquest of Lachish," "the carrying of captives from of Lachish of Judean captives." "Judean, the word is there, back to other parts of Assyria must have been phenomenal." "Here is a site that is mentioned in the Bible." "And, again, is it a real site?" "Suddenly, it becomes real." "Suddenly, it is three dimensional." "Suddenly, it is tangible, and that provoked an enthusiasm that has lasted 160 years until our own time for the archeology of the Near East with specific respect to its relationship to the Bible." "Layard's remarkable discoveries lifted Assyria from obscurity, placing it firmly in the pantheon of history's great empires." "He went on to a successful career as a member of Parliament, and ambassador to Constantinople." "And by the time this Victorian statesman died in 1894, the Middle East was no longer a forgotten backwater." "The Ottoman Turks were losing their grip on the region, and it had become a pawn in a game of empire, veering dangerously out of control." "In the new century, another British adventurer would help forge an even bigger role for the crown in the Middle East." "Her name was Gertrude Bell, and she has often been called the brain behind the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia." "At the close of World War I, it was she who redrew the map of the Middle East." "She also championed modern archeology, and insisted that a country had the right to keep its own antiquities." "Born in 1868, Gertrude Bell is in many ways a tragic figure." "Despite a life of achievement, unusual for a woman in her time, she remained unsatisfied, never convinced that the treasure she was seeking was truly the one she wanted." "As a teenager, the red headed young woman spent most of her time surrounded by books." "Like Austin Henry Layard, she was captivated by the mysterious world of the Arabian Nights." "This was really the height of British lmperialism in the East, so that all of these images of the Orient were even far more prevalent than during Layard's childhood." "The museums by then were stocked with antiquities from Assyria and Babylon." "Gertrude was especially fascinated by the politics of the East." "But she always felt as if she were laboring under a handicap..." " Her gender." "I wish I could go to the National Gallery, but there is no one to take me." "If I were a boy, I should go to that incomparable place every week." "But being a girl, to see lovely things is denied me." "Gertrude was an exceptional child." "As a girl in particular, she was exceptional because her father encouraged her to read, to learn, to be adventurous, to explore." "And then she was sent off to Oxford University, one of the first women to attend Oxford." "And she left there with the highest honors in her field." "Gertrude was 20 years old." "But now, instead of thinking about a suitable career for a person of her talents, convention dictated that she go about the business of finding a suitable husband." "She had three chances." "Three seasons in which she was presented to society." "And it was expected that she would find a husband along the way." "She didn't." "Either she didn't like the men who were attracted to her, or the men she was attracted to were not interested in her." "At the end of the three seasons, she had no husband, and in British Victorian terms, no future." "For a wealthy young woman like Gertrude, there was only one solution." "Travel." "Gertrude prevailed upon her father to allow her to visit a family friend in the place she'd dreamed about ever since she was a child." "When she arrived, she found it everything she'd imagined and more." ""Persia," she wrote in her very first letter home, "is paradise."" "Gertrude Bell was 23 years old when she arrived in the city of Tehran in the spring of 1892." "She began studying the language at once, and within a few months was translating Persian poems into English." "Soon, she was happier than she'd ever been before." "She had finally met a man worthy of her affections, a young British diplomat named Henry Cadugan." "It wasn't long before the two of them fell quite madly in love." "He introduced her to the desert, which took her breath away." "But when the two of them wrote to her father asking for his permission to marry, the answer was slow in coming." "They waited and they waited until finally the answer came." "And it was not what they wanted to hear." "Gertrude's father was very upset." "He had checked out her fiancee, so to speak, and discovered that he was a gambler, and her father was afraid that this was not a man who was steady enough, secure enough for his daughter." "And so, as a Victorian daughter, she did what her father told her." "She came home, and she gave the romance time to cool." "For eight months the heartsick ertrude did everything she could to change her father's mind." "Then a telegram arrived from Tehran." "Henry Cadugan had fallen into an icy river while fishing, had developed pneumonia and died." "At that moment," "Gertrude knew that she would have to make a life on her own." "But it wasn't until she returned to the Middle East that she felt like herself again." "In November of 1899, Gertrude arrived in Jerusalem." "I am extremely flourishing, and so wildly interested in Arabic that I think of nothing else." "I have not seen the moon shine so since I was in Persia." "In England, she could barely venture out without a chaperone." "Here, she could come and go as she pleased." "Once Gertrude Bell arrived in the Middle East, she felt like a free spirit." "She could really soar, and she did, and she absolutely loved it." "And the Arabs respected her." "They had no problem with her being an independent woman." "From Jerusalem Gertrude began to make a series of sorties into the uncharted desert." "She learned to ride like a man, comfortable in the saddle." "The barren landscape brought back the happy times with her lost lover," "Henry Cadugan." "It was almost is if she was searching for his soul, searching for his spirit." ""Daughter of the Desert" the Arabs began to call her, or sometimes "The Desert Queen."" "It was, as she gleefully informed her parents, her first taste of notoriety." "I am a person in this country." "One of the first questions everyone seems to ask everyone else is," ""Have you ever met Miss Gertrude Bell?"" "The quest to be recognized as a person would haunt Gertrude for the rest of her life." "She sought recognition in a series of fearless treks into the desert, writing books about her travels, and documenting the culture and people of the Middle East in thousands of photographs." "Along the way, she discovered the excitement of archeology, flourishing here in these years before World War I." "It was like a banquet open for the taking." "At site after site, archeologists were unearthing the priceless treasures of humanity's earliest civilizations." "Staking their claims to this booty for their museums back home." "At the ruins of Babylon, Gertrude marveled as German archeologists brought the imposing city back to life." "It is the most extraordinary place." "I have seldom felt the ancient world come so close." "She stopped to visit English arche ologists at the ruins of Carchemish." "A dig strategically placed near the construction of a new German railroad through the desert." "One of the archeologists was a promising young graduate student named T. E. Lawrence." "In these uneasy years before wartime, it wasn't surprising to see the English doing double duty digging and keeping watch over the activities of the Germans nearby." "This complete separation between archeology and politics that we have today or at least that we think exists today was not true at that time." "Archeology and politics were very closely interrelated." "Gentleman archeologist, gentlewoman archeologist, gentleman spy, gentlewoman spy." "It was part of what in the 19th century was called "The Great Game."" "And there was this constant interplay between archeology and intelligence at a very informal level." "It is no coincidence that a lot of archeologists became intelligence officers in World War I, because they had done it before the war working at archeological sites." "Gertrude was intrigued with archeology, but she had other things on her mind." "In the spring of 1913, at the age of 45, she fell hopelessly in love for the second time in her life." "His name was Richard Doughty Wiley, and he was everything she wanted in a man." "A soldier and a scholar who was handsome and brave, and radiated British pluck." "Unfortunately, he was also married." "She was completely intrigued with this man, and fell madly in love with him." "He was a bit of a callous man." "He was a man who was a true womanizer, and he even told her about some of his other experiences, which was kind of cruel, I think." "But no matter, she was wildly in love with him, and he encouraged her and her work." "Secretly they met for a passionate weekend at Gertrude's family home in the English countryside." "Victorian to her core, she resisted consummating their affair." "The situation seemed hopeless." "And then he was sent off to the Balkans in 1913, and it was a heartbreaking thing for her, but it also stimulated her desire to show that she was as adventurous, as intrepid, as indomitable as Doughty Wiley." "So Gertrude Bell actually set off on the journey of her life." "Her destination was Central Arabia, the vast desert of the Nejd." "Gertrude embarked on a private mission to meet with two of the desert's most powerful sheiks." "Men whose rivalries had kept the area a no man's land for a generation." "Turkish and British authorities forbade her to go." "But as usual, Gertrude did things her way." "When Gertrude set off on her big expeditions into the desert, she would take with her Wedgwood china, her crystal stemware, the silver flatware, her tweed jackets, her linen clothes, her fur coats, her fringed shawls," "her petticoats and her crinolines, and she would use those to hide her rifles and her guns and her theadolite and her compasses, because she did not want the Turks to know what she was doing in the desert." "With her imperious manner," "Gertrude had a way of ensuring an audience with even the most elusive sheiks." "She impressed them with her command of Arabic and her passion for politics." "When she would present herself to a sheik or to a tribal leader or to a dignitary, the way that she spoke and the way that she held herself was of such import" "that they saw her not as a woman, but as a figure of authority." "And so her gender was forgotten about." "It was completely ignored." "In fact, they saw her as a person with a capital P." "And that was something that Gertrude Bell aspired to to be seen as a person wherever she went." "I think by paradox, in the Arab world, she was so exotic, both because she dressed every bit the Victorian" "Englishwoman, and because at the same time she spoke Persian, she spoke Arabic, she could deal with them man to man, and yet she looked very much the woman yet not one of theirs, but a foreign, exotic, other woman" "made her such a fascinating creature that she gained entry, paradoxically, into their world as a man from Britain could not have done." "To Bell it was clear that the power of the Ottoman Turks was fading in the Middle East." "To be replaced, she believed, by British influence." "Some Arab sheiks favored the British, others the Turks." "On this trip in 1913, tensions were too high even for Gertrude." "She headed home and wrote up her impressions for the British government." "Just a few months later, World War I broke out." "And the report that she had written became vital to the British." "She was the person who knew the balances of powers, the shifting alliances." "She had contacts which were truly awesome in the desert, and the respect of the chieftains." "Gertrude's report reflected her keen understanding of the opportunity in the Middle East." "The time had come, she wrote, to organize the Arabs in a revolt against the Turks." "In wartime, the strategy was irresistible as the Ottoman Turks had sided with the Germans against the British." "The same British who had forbade her to go into the desert, turned around and drafted her as a spy for the British in the Middle East." "Working closely beside Gertrude in intelligence in the Cairo bureau were several ex archeologists, including T. E. Lawrence," "a." "K.a., Lawrence of Arabia." "Gertrude Bell was actually the brains behind T. E. Lawrence." "He had actually never been to Arabia." "It was Gertrude Bell who had been there, and so she was the one who was able to tell Lawrence which sheiks he should contact, and who was reliable and who was not." "She was as essential or more so than Lawrence, I think, in convincing Arab leaders to side with the British." "She had their trust in a way that" "I think no Western man could quite accomplish." "But, of course, when it came time to go off to the desert and become the liaison with the Arabs, the British said, Lawrence is going, and when Gertrude Bell said, I want to go," "they said, Don't be ridiculous;" "it is much too dangerous for a woman." "Now, of course, she was the one who had been there originally." "But the British being the British, that was their attitude, and they would not let her go." "Gertrude remained desk bound, feeding information to Lawrence at the front." "She knew every important oasis in the Arabian desert, every Arab sheik who might be persuaded to rise against the Turks." "Slowly, the tide of the war turned." "In January of 1917," "Lawrence led his famous charge against Ottoman forces in Aqaba, one of the finest moments of the Arab revolt." "Two months later, British forces occupied Baghdad." "Gertrude Bell wasn't far behind." "When the Armistice came in January 1918, she was exactly where she wanted to be." "There was always this sense of ownership in her attitude towards Iraq." "And she loved it in a very paternalistic way, with this attitude that she, herself, could control the area that she could decide what was going to happen to it." "There was one letter that Gertrude Bell wrote home where she said, "I feel like God in his creation."" "She was so aware that the British were creating countries," "Puppet states, if you will, for the British." "But starting from scratch." "There had never been a state of Iraq before." "There had never been any such thing." "In this great expanse of empty desert and disparate tribes," "Gertrude Bell drew the lines, creating the modern state of Iraq." "Defining the contours of the contemporary Middle East, still in contention today." "In 1919, nationalism seethed as the British and French divided the area into protectorates." "At first, Gertrude believed that the British should govern Iraq." "But T. E. Lawrence helped change her mind." "He argued that the throne belonged to this man, Faisal, the charismatic leader of the Arab revolt." "At a conference in Cairo in 192 1," "Gertrude Bell took her place between Lawrence and Winston Churchill." "There were these famous pictures of her at conferences where she is the only woman." "This must have been incredibly hard, and she carried it off." "She was a woman in a world dominated by men." "Surprisingly, Gertrude Bell preferred it that way." "Back in England, she had campaigned against a woman's right to vote." "In her gut, she really never did believe that women were the equal of men." "She believed that she was intellectually, but of course, if all women were treated as the equal of men, that would also have made her less special." "It would have made her just another woman who happened to be an extraordinary one, but just another woman." "Now, this extraordinary woman prepared for the coronation of King Faisal." "She made sure he couldn't do without her, hosting a series of teas and dinners for him in the garden of her home." "These were some of the best years of Gertrude Bell's life." "She was very close to the King, King Faisal." "In fact, she had an almost school girl crush on him, and he was very fond of her." "And everybody relied on her, so she had a great sense of importance, of power." "On pleasant afternoons, Gertrude would take Faisal to view the ancient ruins in the desert." ""We shall make Iraq as great as its past," she promised the new king." "But it wasn't long before Faisal had his own ideas, his own set of advisors." "To occupy Gertrude's time, he appointed her honorary director of antiquities." "She took the position seriously, insisting that her British and American colleagues turn over 50 percent of the treasures they found in Iraq to form the nucleus of a new museum in Baghdad." "Gertrude Bell wrote some of the first laws protecting the rights of a country to safeguard its ancient treasures." "Yet her letters home were sounding plaintive." "Except for the museum, I'm not enjoying life at all." "The role of the British in Iraq was waning, and with it, Gertrude's power." "As time went by, there were no more dinner parties in her garden." "And so she found herself there more and more on her own, with less and less to do." "She became sadder and sadder, until she felt as if a great black cloud had come over her." "She felt that there was nothing left for her in Baghdad, and certainly nothing left for her in England." "One has the sharp sense of being near the end of things, with no certainty as to what, if anything, one will do next." "It is a very lonely business living here now." "In her mind she felt that she had failed in her lifelong quest to be recognized as a person." "She was tired, ill, and alone." "Haunted by doubts about the choices she had made." "On July 11, 1926, three days before her 58th birthday," "Gertrude Bell took an overdose of sleeping pills and died." "She was buried the next day in a full military funeral attended by thousands of people." "One of her colleagues paid tribute:" "Hers was the brightest spirit that shone upon our labors in the East." "Gertrude's dream of the East had sustained her through a life of public achievement and personal heartache." "She may have died doubting it, but to history she was a person at last." "It was a forbidden place, and thus irresistible." "A timeless land in the sky, an other worldly people, and no use for the wheel but as a spinner of prayers." "And so they came," "Westerners intent on exploring Tibet and its elusive capital Lhasa." "Few survived the trials of fire, ice and violence that awaited them on Tibet's natural ramparts." "Where so many others had failed, two would succeed." "One prevailed through stealth, a spy whose feats of espionage still rank among the greatest in the world, but have almost been forgotten." "The other prevailed through force, leaving a trail of blood and tears that would shock the world and utterly transform the victor." "These are the tales of their epic journeys in the fantastic and deadly race for Tibet." "Winter, 1865." "An over burdened caravan descends from the snowy passes of the Himalayas into the forbidden land." "Few tread lightly here." "Most foreigners are turned back or killed." "But these hearty merchants carry coveted goods from neighboring lands." "The caravan has picked up a pious hitchhiker of sorts, a lone holy man on a pilgrimage." "The only other kind of incursion that Tibetans welcome." "But strangely, the Buddhist's strides are all exactly the same length." "His rosary is missing several beads, and his prayer wheel contains no prayers." "He is a spy, not a monk." "If discovered, he will die." "The roots of Nain Singh's secret journey run as deep and old as the world's obsession with the magical kingdom on the rooftop of the world." "At the heart of Asia, thrust some three miles in the air by a clash of continents," "Tibet is an astounding natural fortress the size of Western Europe." "For hundreds of years, Tibetans saw no need to bar foreigners." "Only a handful survived the trek through the surrounding mountains and deserts." "And these proved no threat to their cherished Buddhist theocracy." "Here every fourth person was a monk or a nun." "But by the 1800s," "Tibet began to feel the pressure of two new powers in Asia." "Britain, effectively in control of India since 1833, had been steadily expanding its influence northward into the Himalayas." "Russia, meanwhile, was swallowing up territory in Central Asia as it pushed its empire eastwards." "Tibet knew little about the outsiders, except that both powers were Christian, not Buddhist." "Fearing for their way of life, the land of monks closed its borders." "Paradoxically, it was the closing of Tibet that ensured the West would have to pry it open again." "And this was during the era of exploration where people wanted to get to Antarctica, the North Pole, they wanted to go up the Nile, and so Lhasa became a real, as we might say today, a real destination." "But nobody could get there." "You had the last European in Lhasa in 1811." "And then you suddenly have a gap" "Right up until the very end of the 19th century where you get no foreigners or no Europeans mentioned going to Tibet." "And this creates this great kind of mystery of Tibet, and the idea that somehow people had to break through and sort of reach the Forbidden City of Lhasa." "In India, paranoia, much as curiosity, drove the need to get into neighboring Tibet." "It was the era of the "Great Game", a cold war between Russia and Britain for the domination of Central Asia." "The British feared that if the Russians were to gain a foothold in Tibet, they might use it as a base for invading India." "The forbidden land became the center square on the chessboard of the "Great Game"" "one that needed to be explored and mapped at all costs." "The Russians were coming, and this created a great deal of anxiety." "The problem was that Tibet was basically closed." "So that left the Brits with a problem how do you map Tibet if you can't get in to have a look?" "It was a young officer in the Royal Engineers who hit upon Britain's best hope in the race for Tibet." "Thomas George Montgomerie had spent years overseeing natives in the great trigonometrical survey of India, a massive British effort to create an accurate map of the entire Indian subcontinent." "He'd also noted that Indians often passed freely into Tibet where no white man would be allowed." "Perhaps an Indian spy, trained in the arts of espionage and surveying, might penetrate Tibet, disguised as a trader or holy man." "Captain Montgomerie, in typical colonial fashion, had some doubts whether a native of sufficient intelligence and raw nerve might be found, but obtained permission to give his plan a try." "Thus began the unlikely career of one of the most successful spies in the history of espionage." "Nain Singh, then a 33 year old school teacher, had grown up in the shadows of the Himalayas." "His family had traded in Tibet and he could read and write Tibetan." "He quickly accepted the assignment, despite its dangers." "Nain Singh was just one of those people." "You know, they are individuals who are great achievers." "There was this man living in a very remote village." "I mean, what kind of opportunities did he have to really accomplish something really great?" "In 1863, the young schoolteacher reported for duty at the survey of India's headquarters in Dehra Dun." "There, he would undergo two years of intensive training in the arts of surveying." "He learned the use of the sextant and the compass, and to locate his position using the stars." "Through endless repetition, the novice spy learned to walk at an exactly measured pace" "31 and a half inches a stride." "Or 2,000 paces to the mile." "He would keep track of those paces on a rosary." "The Buddhist rosary contains 108 beads, a holy number." "Nain Singh's rosary would have only 100 to more easily keep track of the strides." "Montgomerie had dubbed him the Pundit," "Hindi for the "wise one" and sent him on his way." "His daunting task, to find his way to Lhasa, the Forbidden City, to chart his course counting every stride along the way and to spy on the political, religious and economic life of Lhasa for as long as possible." "Nain Singh knew what fate awaited him if he were caught an almost certain death." "It would take Nain Singh eight frustrating months to cross into Tibet." "At first, the Pundit had tried to enter through Nepal disguised as a horse trader, but suspicious border guards turned him away." "He managed to slip by those same border guards a few weeks later, disguised as a holy man." "He had already acquired an escort, the first of several caravans that would offer him protection on the dangerous journey." "In the outlying areas of Tibet, bandits far outnumbered monks." "Singh seem to be quite the favorite with these caravans, some of whom would vouch for him when Tibetans they encountered grew curious." "But sometimes the Pundit had to travel alone." "Once, when his companions had the chance to travel by river, he had to make his excuses to continue on foot." "Without his measured pace, his survey would have gone awry." "With numb feet, he strode his perfect 31 and a half inch stride." "With numb fingers, he counted those strides on his rosary." "He kept his surveying notes where no one would think to look in a cleverly modified prayer wheel." "Usually the wheel contains a scroll with a holy incantation on it." "Each turn sends the Buddhist prayer whirling heavenward." "While his companions slept, the Pundit would slip a thermometer into the camp pots." "The boiling point of water would tell him his altitude, a vital part of the survey." "Five months into the journey, the Pundit was beginning to worry." "The caravan was approaching the town of Shigatse, where they planned to stay several months." "The Forbidden City was still a long way off, and Nain Singh's funds were almost exhausted." "Once in Shigatse, the resourceful Pundit managed to support himself by teaching accounting to merchants." "But he also received a most unwelcome invitation to the great Tashilhunpo monastery, home to some 3,000 Buddhist priests." "To refuse would be to arouse suspicion." "But could a Hindu pretender remain undetected among so many true Buddhists?" "Even worse, he would have an audience with the monastery's leader, the Panchen Lama." "Second only to the Dalai Lama in power, the Panchen Lama was reputed to be able to see into the hearts of all men." "Nain Singh would have to offer the Lama a gift of silk, then respond to any three questions the Lama asked." ""Is your king well?" "Does your country prosper?" "Are you in good health?"" "With amazed relief, the Pundit realized that the Panchen Lama was an 11 year old boy, who seemed to have no interest in peering into the heart of a spy." "But it was a close call." "How long could a pretender in a land of monks escape detection?" "In December the caravan moved on with their Buddhist holy man in tow, the mind numbing rhythm of the Pundit's walking survey resumed." "Tedium, punctuated by fear." "Anyone who's walked in Tibet, trekked, hiked, tried to get around Tibet on foot knows that it is exhausting." "I mean, the altitudes are extremely high." "You go up passes 16, sometimes 17,000 feet where you're just barely able to put one foot in front of the other." "The oxygen is thin." "You have a terrible splitting headache." "I mean, there was no roads, there were no wheels." "There was no nothing." "Above all, it was risky because you might be discovered." "Several times the nightmare of all caravans in these badlands occurred." "A violent attack by bandits." "Once the Pundit was forced to escape by horseback a desperate maneuver that would foil his plans to walk off every yard to Lhasa." "He vowed to make it up by pacing the journey on his return trip." "January 10th, 1866." "Exactly one year since he set out from India, the fabled city of Lhasa lay before the Pundit." "He had counted over a million strides to get here." "But now the most crucial and dangerous phase of his cloak and dagger existence had just begun." "He would be living on borrowed time." "We arrived this day at Lhasa and, soon after my arrival, engaged two rooms: one was well adapted for taking star observations." "After fixing the position of Lhasa," "Singh set about fulfilling the rest of his mission to gather as much intelligence on the political, economic and religious life of the Forbidden City as possible." "Singh's rooms situated just 20 yards from the Jokang, the holy central square of the city, were perfect for the task." "In the center of the city stands a very large temple." "The idols within it are richly inlaid with gold and precious stones." "This temple is surrounded by bazaars and shops." "On a low hill, there is a large and strong fort, called the "Potala" which is the residence of the Lama Guru." "The Lama Guru is the chief of all Tibet, but he does not interfere with state business." "He is looked upon as a guardian divinity, and is supposed to never die, but transmigrates into anybody he pleases." "I observed there is but little order and justice to be seen in Lhasa." "In the Forbidden City, the Pundit's position was more precarious than ever." "The threat of discovery a constant dread." "Once, a chance encounter with merchants from his professed homeland, exposed his deceit." "Somehow, he managed to convince them not to turn him in." "Not long after his arrival," "Nain Singh would once again receive an invitation he could not refuse." "This time, an audience with the Dalai Lama himself in the great Potala." "And once again, the Pundit would find himself before a living god who could peer into the hearts of men, it was said" "only to find himself gazing into the eyes of a child of 13." "But his luck could not hold forever." "And the price of discovery was about to become terrifyingly clear." "One night on the street, Singh witnessed firsthand what happened to foreigners unwelcome in Lhasa." "In this case, a Chinese man who did not have permission to be in the capital." "He was brought out before the whole of the people and beheaded with very little hesitation." "Owing to my alarm," "I changed my residence and seldom appeared in public again." "When Singh heard that the caravan that had conveyed him to Lhasa was ready to head back out of Tibet, he knew it was time to begin the 500 mile walk home." "October 1866." "An exhausted Nain Singh crosses the Himalayas once again and descends from the Rooftop of the World into his homeland in the foothills of northern India." "He has been gone almost a year and a half." "He has walked two and a half million paces on his 1,200 mile trek, counting virtually every step of the way." "He has lived undetected in the Forbidden City of Lhasa for three months." "He has returned to the Survey of India in Dehra Dun with a treasure beyond the wildest imaginings of his mentor," "Captain Montgomerie." "By these really in a way quite primitive techniques, they were able to map the whole of sort of southwestern Tibet." "What is interesting is that the Survey of India maps, which are around today, are still based on quite a lot of information which were obtained by the Pundit." "Until Nain Singh went to Lhasa, the western world had no idea, really what was where in Tibet." "It didn't really even know where Lhasa was° ° ° they knew it was up there." "Years later, it would be confirmed that Nain Singh had calculated the position of Lhasa correct to within half a degree of latitude a remarkable feat." "Montgomerie, while keeping the identity of his super spy to himself, detailed Nain Singh's amazing journey to the president of the Royal Geographical Society." "I'm quite sure he would make a good impression anywhere." "And I can quite understand his being an immense favorite with the Ladhakis who conveyed him into the sacred city." "The Pundit, I think, deserves all praise." "His work has stood every test, capitally." "Captain George Montgomerie." "Nain Singh would go on to make two more secret journeys into Tibet." "He then helped Montgomerie recruit and train other Pundits who continued filling in the blank spaces on the map of the forbidden land." "Some never came back." "Others, like Nain Singh himself, would never be the same." "Nain Singh paid a very heavy cost in terms of his health." "He was totally worn out." "His eyesight had also been affected." "I mean, there was no way to protect himself for snow blindness and the glare." "He just had to retire." "He couldn't undertake any more journeys." "For his extraordinary work," "Singh was quietly awarded a gold medal from the Royal Geographic Society and a small pension." "He was the first native to be recognized by the Royal Geographical Society as having accomplished something that was the equivalent of any of the greatest explorers of the West." "So in a certain sense, that was a real breakthrough." "The Pundits suffered the same fate as so many spies, which is they don't really get much recognition for what they do;" "everything is shrouded in secrecy." "What I think is extraordinary is really how little recognition or thanks they got for the remarkably dangerous work that they undertook on behalf of the Survey of India and, you know, ultimately the British Empire in India." "Nain Singh, one of the most extraordinary spies the world has ever seen, died in obscurity at the age of 53." "Almost four decades would pass before a European, following in the Pundit's footsteps, would reach the Forbidden City." "This journey, unlike Nain Singh's, would be marked by bloodshed." "March 31 st, 1904." "On a desolate plain some 10,000 feet in the air, two forces eye each other warily." "They are divided by a crude stone wall, and a tragic chasm of culture, time and faith." "The defenders:" "Tibetan peasants and monks, bearing arms that are centuries out of date." "The invaders: a British force equipped with the new killing machines of the 20th century." "No one who watches the terrible four minutes that follow will be unmoved." "The man responsible will be utterly transformed by the maelstrom he unleashes here." "As the 19th century pushed to its close," "Tibet was much on the minds of many Europeans." "Being the first to reach Lhasa since the closing of Tibet's borders had become the holy grail of explorers, as well as for the spies playing out the "Great Game" in the Himalayas." "For about I'd say about 1870-1880 onwards, you get increasingly sort of obsessive interest in Tibet." "Tibet was seen as this inaccessible, forbidden, foreign Shangri La." "And I think there were probably hundreds or thousands of British officers hanging around in the Himalayas at the end of the 19th century, all of whom wanted to be the first one to break through and get to Lhasa," "The Forbidden City that no European had been to since 1811." "And it created this great race in the latter part of the 19th century to be the first to get to Lhasa." "And many tried, and many failed." "Russian Colonel, Nikolai Prejevalsky, made five failed attempts, even though he was escorted by heavily armed Cossacks." "American diplomat and scholar, William Rockhill, disguised as a Chinese pilgrim, also failed twice." "Renowned Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin, he too disguised as a pilgrim, was turned back just five days' march from Lhasa." "British missionary Annie Tayler made it to within three days' march of Lhasa, before being betrayed by her Chinese guide and taken prisoner." "Canadian Susie Rijnhart's story is the most tragic." "Physician and missionary, she watched her infant son perish from altitude sickness, then lost her Dutch husband to bandits after Tibetan officials forced them to turn back." "At the close of the 19th century," "Tibet had managed to repel some 11 Western attempts to reach Lhasa in four decades." "But its medieval weapons could not hold off the modern world forever." "The man who would win the Europeans race for Tibet was born in India in 1863, the year Nain Singh arrived at spy school in Dehra Dun." "The son of a British army officer, Francis Edward Younghusband would be sent off to England at four to be raised by two spinster aunts, a religious pair who beat him regularly." ""I lost my childhood happiness, and became serious,"" "Younghusband would later write." "At 12, he would be sent off to boarding school at Clifton, an institution designed to mold young men of empire." "Already oversensitive, repressed and shy, the small statured Younghusband found his more rambunctious schoolmates intimidating and made few friends." "It was not until he was 16 that he would find his soul mate in his previously distant sister, Emmy." "After he fainted in chapel one night, she nursed him back to health, and the two would exchange strangely passionate letters for much of their adult lives." "After graduating from Clifton and then military academy, he left a distraught Emmy behind and set off for India." "Like his father before him, he would serve on the Northern Frontier in the King's Dragoons, and take his place in the "Great Game"." "Shy, but fiercely ambitious," "Younghusband was a natural 'Great Gamer, ' a true believer of the righteousness of empire, and a vocal worrier about Russian designs on all of Asia." "But regimental life proved stifling to the young man, and once again his seriousness isolated him from his peers." "Francis had always imagined himself living a life more like that of his uncle and childhood hero, Robert Shaw." "A flamboyant adventurer and tea planter," "Shaw had traveled to many exotic lands beyond the Himalayas." "He had earned himself a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society, as well as a penchant for dressing in native costumes." "At age 2 1, Younghusband trekked into the Himalayas not far from his late uncle's house, and was enchanted." "From this moment forward, his urgent ambitions would take the shape of these mountains." "And for the rest of his life, mountains would stir odd mystical longings that his strict religious upbringing had never satisfied." "I had caught just a glimpse of the other side of the Himalayan range, but I thirsted for more mountain beauty." "I determined to go to Tibet, and to come to know the curious people of that secluded country, make a great name for myself, and be known ever after as a famous traveler." "It was China, not Tibet, that would give Francis Younghusband his first taste of fame." "1887 found the 24 year old officer in the middle of the Gobi Desert, retracing a path followed by no European since Marco Polo." "He had managed to convince his superiors that he could find a new land route from China to India." "The promised route would take him to the Mustagh Pass, the watershed between India and China, and long considered impassable." "Under the shadow of K2, the world's second highest peak, this small man found himself once again spiritually transformed by a mountain." ""Having once seen that,"" "he would later write, "how could I ever be little again?"" "The ice precipice at the crest of the Mustagh did indeed look impassable to Younghusband, but when his native guide started down the other side, he followed." "On slick leather boots and without ice crampons, it was a near suicidal descent, but it would earn Younghusband the fame he craved." "Some called it the greatest feat of mountaineering yet accomplished, and the Royal Geographical Society would award him the coveted gold medal for his journey." "His exploits would also bring him to the attention of another 'Great Gamer' called George Curzon, who shared his fascination with Tibet and would one day cast Younghusband's fate in the forbidden land." "Younghusband was now one of the world's most eligible bachelors, but only on paper." "Around any woman other than his sister Emmy, the daring explorer was in agony, desperately wishing himself miles away, preferably alone in the Himalayas." "He was terrified of women." "He found them baffling." "He found them strange." "He didn't really know how to get on with them or relate to them." "If you like, he could express himself probably better by climbing a mountain than he could by having a conversation with somebody." "Francis, for his part, was agonizingly aware of his plight." "A beautiful young socialite had agreed to marry him, but broke it off when the smitten Francis could not overcome his stiff, nearly mute panic in her presence." "I am losing my darling May." "All the time I am cold and stiff and formal." "Dejected, Younghusband set his sights once more on Tibet." "He requested leave to slip into the forbidden land disguised as a Himalayan merchant." "But his superiors had had enough of his adventures." "And 15 years would pass before fate would give him his shot at Tibet." "In January 1899, a miserable Francis Younghusband watched as his friend George Curzon was installed as Viceroy of India amidst great pomp and circumstance." "While Curzon's star had risen, Younghusband's own had fallen, his early fame eclipsed by a reputation as a bit of a loose cannon." "His army career had plateaued early." "And his personal life was desperately unhappy." "He had married an older woman who made him promise that they would never have sex." "Somehow the couple managed to have children, but the marriage was never a happy one." "Approaching 40, the once great explorer was now going nowhere fast." "He has really reached this point by his late 30s where his career has stagnated and almost stopped." "And that's the moment when suddenly he gets the call from the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, who is a personal friend of his." "He says to him would he like to lead a small expedition into Tibet." "Curzon, from all accounts, was a fairly paranoid person when it came to the potential designs of Russia." "Tibet was important for him because he felt that if imperial Russia was to move down and to sort of win Tibet over, then they would have the Russian bear right at the door of the British Raj." "But the 13th Dalai Lama had refused to open the country to British trade, to allow Curzon's emissaries beyond the border, or even to open Curzon's letters." "The Viceroy decided it was time for more forceful measures, and his friend heartily agreed." "I have no hesitation in recommending that the power of the monks should be so far broken as to prevent them any longer selfishly obstructing the prosperity of both Tibet and of the neighboring British districts." "Francis Younghusband" "Thus it was that in 1903 Younghusband led 2,000 British and Indian soldiers over the 14,000 foot high Jelap Pass into Tibet." "Behind them marched a ragged support column of some 10,000 coolies and a handful of English journalists dying for the scoop of the new century." "Also pressed into service were six camels, 3,000 ponies, 5,000 yaks and buffaloes, and 5,000 bullocks, and more than 7,000 mules most doomed to die on the journey." "The whole strange caravan trailed telegraph wire that stretched back into India like an umbilical cord to the modern world." "Younghusband would be in charge of negotiating with the Tibetans." "The military leader was an undistinguished General named McDonald." "Younghusband and McDonald detested each other, a situation that probably contributed to the tragedy ahead." "The British would meet little resistance on the first leg of the journey, but the conditions would be harsher than any the British and Indian soldiers had encountered before." "Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten, and 30 men of the 23rd Pioneers were so incapacitated that they had to be carried on mules." "On the same day, there were 70 cases of snow blindness among the 8th Gurkhas." "Edmund Candler," "The Daily Mail" "Outwardly, Younghusband himself seemed impervious to the elements, taking cold baths each morning and spending long periods reading, writing and meditating out in the elements." "In his journal, he was already writing about mental telepathy, extra terrestrials and out of body travel." "Four months into the journey as the mission approached the town of Guru, the Tibetan resistance finally materialized." "In the middle of a barren plain, massed behind a small hastily built wall, some 1500 Tibetan troops lay in wait." "They vastly outnumbered the British advance guard, but their firepower was 300 years out of date." "If you read the Tibetan accounts of this period, it seems that the Tibetans say we're not going to fight, but were not going to go away." "And the British are baffled by this." "You've got to remember the whole idea of passive resistance was not something that was understood in 1903, 1904." "And Tibet's reaction was, just please go away." "Younghusband's reaction was, we've got to talk." "He went further and further and further, and it was an enormous tragedy by the end." "The whole thing must have been incomprehensible to these poor men." "No order had been given to them to retire." "Gathered together in a body, heir enormous superiority in numbers must have struck them." "They had no idea, of course, of the advantage which we possessed." "Perceval Landon," "The Times, London." "In my view, I think the Tibetans actually knew that they were up against a formidable force." "I think it is wrong to say that they were so naive that they thought they really could resist the British." "They had no other choice, even if they knew they would be slaughtered, but to oppose that." "The Tibetan general rode out to plead his case." "He begged Younghusband to turn back, retreat to the border and negotiate there." "But Younghusband was unmoved." "He gave the general 15 minutes to begin disarming." "15 minutes later," "General McDonald ordered his troops into fighting positions, assuming the Tibetans would simply hand over their arms when confronted with his machine guns, modern rifles and heavy artillery." "But each Tibetan carried on his chest a small pouch containing a blessing from the Dalai Lama, designed to render him impervious to English bullets." "McDonald gave the order to approach and begin disarming the Tibetans." "What exactly happened next is still unclear." "That it was one of the bleakest moments in military history is not." "According to British reports, it was the Tibetan general who resisted and fired the first shot." "Immediately the British began firing their terrible weapons into the mass of the Tibetan soldiers." "The Tibetans poured over the wall, while the artillery and automatic weapons cut them down in waves." "To the horror of the British manning the guns against them, the few Tibetans still standing did not run away, they walked." "I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire." "Though the General's order was to make as big a bag as possible." "Lt. Hadow, Commander, Maxim Gun Detachment" "The impossible had happened:" "prayers and charms and mantras the holiest of their holy men had failed them." "They walked with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned with their gods." "Four appalling minutes after it all began, some 700 ragged Tibetans lay dead or dying on the field, their useless charms strewn among them." "Francis Younghusband, who had served for over 20 years in the army but had never seen battle, was horrified." ""It was a terrible and ghastly business,"" "he would later write." "It may have been even more ghastly than his British sensibilities would allow him to admit." "According to the Tibetan and Chinese accounts of the battle, the Tibetans had extinguished the fuses of their ancient matchlocks as a sign of non aggression, rendering them useless for several minutes." "If so, the British were firing artillery and military weapons into a mass of people armed with swords, slingshots, and perhaps five modern rifles." "The British set up a field hospital to save the wounded Tibetans." "Baffled by kindness on the heels of slaughter, the Tibetans nonetheless quickly won over their captors with their spirit and stoicism." "Daily Mail correspondent, Edmund Candler, who had lost a hand in the first few seconds of the battle wrote:" "They were consistently cheerful, and they never hesitated to undergo operations." "Did not flinch at pain, and took chloroform without fear." "Everyone who visited the hospital at Tuna left it with an increased respect for the Tibetans." "It would take four more months for the British force to reach Lhasa." "On July 30th, 1904, in anticipation of the inevitable, the Dalai Lama fled the city." "Five days later, the British marched into the Forbidden City." "Younghusband, who had once hoped to make it to Lhasa as a spy, now entered at the head of an army, only to find the place nearly empty." "Undaunted, he arranged a sort of parade to impress the remaining citizens, and was greeted by what he thought was a conqueror's welcome." "They'd clap at them, like that." "Younghusband thinks this is a very good sign that he is being welcomed." "Later on when I looked at this, I talked to some Tibetans about it who said that it is a way of driving out evil spirits." "They'd go like° ° ° (claps)" "So, I think Younghusband thought they were so happy that they were lining up and clapping." "This, again, you know, the culture difference." "Finally, Younghusband rounded up some high ranking monks with whom to negotiate." "After a month of wrangling, he had achieved all his king and country had asked of him." "He had inspired his troops to follow him through hundreds of miles of the most hostile geography that" "British and Indian soldiers had ever encountered." "He had pried open the doors of Tibet, and negotiated a trade settlement highly favorable to Britain." "But Tibet would not bestow its real gift on Younghusband until the moment of his departure." "On the day before Younghusband is due to leave Lhasa, having gotten the treaty in his pocket, he goes off into the mountains on his pony, and he's suddenly infused with this kind of cosmic joy." "He's infused with this very strong mystical or spiritual experience." "The exhilaration of the moment grew and grew until it thrilled me with overpowering intensity." "Never again could I think evil, or ever be at enmity with any man." "All nature and all humanity were bathed in a rosy, glowing radiancy." "That single hour on leaving Lhasa, was worth all of the rest of a lifetime." "I was boiling over with love for the whole world." "That world, however, had already begun to lament the despoiling of Lhasa." "There are no more forbidden cities which men have not mapped and photographed." "Why could we not have left at least one city out of bounds?" "Candler, The Daily Mail" "Even Lord Curzon was shaken by the taking of Lhasa:" ""I am almost ashamed to have destroyed the virginity of the bride to whom you aspired,"" "he wrote to Swedish explorer Sven Hedin." "Almost immediately London began to distance itself from Younghusband's invasion." "Soon, it would negate it entirely." "What happens a couple of years later is that a liberal government comes to power in London, and three years after his expedition, a new agreement is signed which effectively takes away all the privileges and benefits that Younghusband has gained through the Treaty of Lhasa." "And so the great irony of Younghusband's invasion of Tibet, is that, from a political point of view, it gains almost nothing for the British." "Far more than Tibet itself," "Francis Younghusband would emerge forever changed by his hollow victory and the tragedy he created there." "Outwardly, he remained the good imperialist, serving as provincial governor, president of the Royal Geographical Society and coordinator of the first four expeditions to Mt." "Everest." "But he also became a passionate advocate of Indian self rule, and founded his most lasting legacy, the World Congress of Faiths, a group dedicated to bringing together people of all religions in a spirit of tolerance." "Like many of his time, he would write enthusiastically about spiritualism, the occult, and even extra terrestrials." "His ideas become increasingly kooky." "You can actually get this sense from his diaries that he is going to official functions, and people are slightly thinking" ""What on earth has happened to Francis Younghusband?"" "His prolific writings ranged from confident predictions of a new messiah, to tracts on the sanctity of marriage, though his own marriage was an empty shell." "As his daughter Eileen would later say:" "He had an essential warm heartedness, but it always, somehow, missed the mark." "But finally, at age 76 and for the first time in his life," "Francis Younghusband fell in love." "His passionate affair with the much younger Madeline Lees, a married mother of seven, brought back to him the happiness he had lost in childhood." "You know, the Tibetans very interestingly think that ultimately they actually conquered Younghusband." ""Well, you know, he came and conquered us, butchered us, but in the end, he went back kind of converted and found the right path for himself."" "And this is very much part of our kind of notion of Tibet, that it has this quality to heal, transform, change and to highlight for people, if you could just get there, the spiritual side of life." "The two men who marched to Lhasa did no favors to Tibet, but they revealed to the rest of the world the land that would become the symbol of humanity's spiritual yearnings." "In July 1942," "Sir Francis Edward Younghusband died in the arms of his beloved Madeline." "His last request, a tombstone, carved with the place of his terrible triumph and his strange redemption Lhasa, the Forbidden City at the heart of the once and future forbidden land." "They were 18, or 19, or 20 years old sailors in a tropical paradise." "They didn't know that on the other side of the ocean, another group of young men was preparing to strike them while they slept." "Their paths would cross for a few short hours on a Sunday morning in December." "And in one terrifying instant, more than 1000 of them would die." "The legacy of what happened on December 7th still haunts us today." "In the firrst images from inside the U.S.S. Arizona, an underwater cemetery that's also an ecological time bomb." "In the search for a top secret Japanese submarine that was sunk about an hour before the attack began." "The submarine's heading north starting to dive and in the quest to learn what really happened that day." "And most of all, it still lives on in the memories of the men who were there when everything changed." "Just a young kid when this happened, and I've lived through it." "I lost a lot of my friends." ""I reached down to try and help him and the skin all came off."" ""But I hope it never happens again." "Nobody will ever know what it was like, except somebody that was actually there."" "They never had a chance." "They didn't know what was coming." "Nobody knew about it." "They never woke up."" "This is the story of a day when the history of the world took an unexpected turn at a sleepy little port in Hawaii called Pearl Harbor." "Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the firrst summer of the new millennium." "Sixty years ago, on this island, a battle was fought, perhaps the most one-sided battle in American history." "It plunged the United States into war and, in the space of a little more than two hours, took the lives of 2400 Americans." "Ever since that day, Pearl Harbor has been a place of pilgrimage." "Many of the men who lived through the attack have returned at least once, to remember what happened and to pay their respects to friends who didn't make it." ""We remember December 7th, 1941, when so many gave their last devotion of their efforts" ""Well, it was kinda hard, yes, I'll admit it, because I couldn't do anything that the other guys could." "I was only 5ft 3, weighed 125lb." "My battle station was the number 2 loader on a 5 inch gun and I couldn't even pick up the shells I had to put in the gun."" ""How can this ever happen?" "One of the strongest navies in the world and we're sitting here with our pants down." "We got caught, period."" "It was one of the best assignments in the Navy." "A sailor joining the Pacifirc Fleet in Hawaii could expect warm air, lots of sunshine, and plenty of things to do on shore leave." "In the Atlantic theater, things were different." "Europe had been at war for more than two years." "Hitler's soldiers occupied Paris." "London was being blitzed by Nazi bombs." "For sailors stationed in the Pacifirc, there was only one threat on the horizon yet most Americans new next to nothing about the country or its people who were thought to be short and near-sighted quaint little people ruled by an old-fashioned emperor." "In reality, Japan was a modern military power that had signed a pact with Nazi Germany." "Japanese troops brutally occupied parts of China and were poised to move against other neighbors." "But the United States Pacifirc Fleet stood in the way and early in 1941, the Japanese military decided to do something about that." "Why would Japan want to go to war with the United States?" "What Japan wanted was the oilfirelds in the Dutch East Indies." "What they wanted was the tin and the rubber out of Malaya." "They wanted the Philippines because of its strategic location." "Nobody thought that they would ever come out to Pearl Harbor." "That's how you achieve surprise in war." "You attack where nobody expects it." "It was the brainchild of a 57-year-old Japanese admiral named Isoroku Yamamato." "Yamamato decided to strike the U.S. fleet at its home base at anchor in the cramped, shallow harbor near Honolulu." "Yamamato, he'd studied in the United States, he'd gone to Harvard, he knew what the Americans were like." "And he said at one point," "I don't care if we march troops down Pennsylvania Avenue." "We're not gonna conquer the United States." "He planned the attack with the idea that if we're gonna have any chance of winning this war we've gotta destroy the American fleet, and that'll give us six months to run wild in the south west Pacifirc," "and we can build up a defensive barrier that will be very diffircult for the Americans to crack." "And at some point they're going to say, we quit." "Keep your gains." "In the spring of 1941, planning for the attack began in earnest although only a handful of Japanese offircers knew about it." "A talented pilot named Minoru Genda was given the task of firguring out how to inflict maximum damage on the American fleet... especially its battleships and carriers ...in a surprise attack from the air." "Genda decided that a combination of bombs... and torpedos modifired to operate in shallow waters... would have the best chance of success." "Late that summer and into the fall," "Japanese pilots trained for their top secret mission." "They rehearsed the low altitude attack angles they would need over the harbor." "They practiced strafiing runs over and over." "By fall, Yamamoto's plan had evolved into a mammoth undertaking that would require six carriers, more than 350 airplanes and, almost as an afterthought firve midget submarines." "Those firve midget submarines played a curious and little known part in the attack and an expedition is getting underway in Honolulu to learn more." "One of the tiny subs almost cost Japan the critical elements of surprise." "And that's the one undersea explorer Robert Ballard is hoping to fiind." "For the man who found the Titanic and the Bismarck, this search represents a unique challenge." "it's one of the smallest ships Ballard's ever looked for and, no one really knows where it sank." "Joining him will be a man who was part of the submarine task force six decades ago..." "Kichiji Dewa." "The midget they'll be looking for was sunk by an American destroyer well before the attack started, and should have alerted the American forces but did not." "Gentleman, I'd like to introduce some colleagues here." "Good morning, good morning." "Sir." "Will Lehner and Russ Reetz were there when it happened." "For Ballard, the expedition offers an opportunity to clear up a common misconception." "Well I think most people think that the firrst shot was firred by the Japanese as they swooped over the Pauli and descended on our sleeping fleet that Sunday morning, but in fact the firrst shot was firred out here" "and it was firred by a U.S. destroyer." "And not only was it the firrst shots firred by America in the war, it should have alerted us to that something was going on." "I fiind it incredibly ironic that the attack and sinking of this Japanese submarine an hour before the planes arrived did not alert us and I just fiind that to be amazing." "Ballard's tight schedule only allows him two weeks for the mission- sponsored by National Geographic... but the search area isn't too large, and he does have the right equipment." "Now, all he needs is a little luck." "November 26th, 1941." "The Japanese armada slipped out of port and headed east through wintery seas." "Six carriers were grouped at the center of the formation, surrounded by a protective ring of cruisers, battleships, and destroyers some 30 ships in all." "Because the success of the mission rested on taking the Americans totally by surprise, their route would take them well north of commercial shipping lanes." "If another ship spotted them, the mission would be in jeopardy, and possibly called off." "Strict radio silence was maintained at all times as the attack force moved into position, while, far to the south." "Five Japanese submarines were already closing in on the island of Oahu." "Each mother sub, as it was called, carried one midget submarine, lashed to its afterdeck." "Together, they made up the most controversial element of the strike force." "The Japanese wanted to put everything that they had into this attack and they had midget submarines and so let's use them was Yamamato's decision." "Now there were people in the Japanese high command that objected strongly to that." "'Don't bring submarines into Pearl Harbor in the firrst place, they're not going to get in, and in the second place they're not going to do much damage if they do, and in the third place and by far more important," "that's going to tip off the Americans that an attack is coming." "and it's going to put the Americans up in general quarters, all across Pearl Harbor and all across Hawaii." "So don't use them. '" "But they did use them." "Each midget sub would carry a 2-man crew into battle ten hand-picked, highly trained young men, who were prepared to die for their country." "On the night before the attack, they would penetrate Pearl Harbor wait on the bottom for the planes to strike- then firre their two torpedos at any large ship in their range." "If circumstances permitted, they would try to leave the harbor and rendezvous with the mother subs." "But no one really expected the submariners to return." "They were young, they were enthusiastic, they were courageous, they were ready to go out and die for the Emperor." "And it wasn't a suicide mission." "Nobody said that quite that way but that's what it was, a suicide mission and these guys were eager for it." "There was no sense of impending tragedy." "Everyone felt that we were simply carrying out our duty by taking part in a military action though I felt that they might never make it back."" "Day one of the search about two miles outside the narrow channel that leads into Pearl Harbor." "It was here... somewhere..." "that a destroyed called the U.S.S. Ward was patrolling in the early hours of December 7th." "I was thinking we were a little more of that way, but Russ said we were more of that way." "It's the history that tells you what you need to know and so you have to steep yourself in the history and you have to read all sorts of sources because a lot of history's conflicting." "One book will say one thing, one book will say another thing and so you have to fiind out well what do we all agree upon and where is the uncertainty?" "Here the uncertainty was where were they exactly when the attack took place?" "Coming in from another direction and all the historical data." "Well you know after the war, and in fact during the war, this became a dumping site and our biggest fear is that they dumped something right on top of what we're looking for, so basically what you have down here is a museum of World War II." "We don't know what the currents are going to be like, we don't know what the visibility is going to be like," "We don't know how the ships are going to perform." "So today is a big learning curve." "Day one of our expedition." "Ballard decides the work will go faster if he adds another machine to the mix- a remotely operated vehicle called little Herc." "It's an imaging RO V. It moves very rapidly, we can cover a lot of ground quick and see a lot of targets quick." "So it's just a good way to go." "Little Herc is tethered behind a bulkier imaging system called Argus, and the two vehicles descend to 600 feet." "In the control room, the team gets its firrst glimpse of the sea floor." "What's this coming up?" "A cylinder Is that a torpedo?" "No." "A piece of pipe." "This is really exciting every little thing looks like part of it." "Well it looks like these are depth charges, there's a whole bunch of 'em." "There's another one." "As the firrst few days of the search come to an end, they've seen a lot of debris and not much else." "Saturday night December 6th, 1941." "Sailors on shore leave fiilled the bars on hotel street in Honolulu." "The usual Saturday night crowd gathered for dinner and dancing." "At Hickam fireld, the airplanes were parked wingtip to wingtip." "and, in the harbor, the warships of the Pacifirc Fleet prepared for the night." "California, Oklahoma, Maryland Tennessee, West Virginia," "Arizona, Nevada." "The last day of peace in the United States was coming to an end." "December 7th 1941 a few minutes after midnight." "Ten miles away from the mouth of Pearl Harbor, the firve mother submarines prepared to launch the midgets." "The Japanese crews could see the lights on Waikiki and make out strains of jazz when the wind shifted." "Each of the submariners wrote a letter to his parents." "Sadamu Kamida was a quiet mountain boy who loved baseball." ""Forgive this negligent son for not writing these long months." "We are soon to be dispatched to regions unknown." "Should anything happen to me, do not grieve or mourn;" "should I fail to write, do not be alarmed;" "for it means I am well and discharging my duties faithfully." "Goodbye."" "The night before they left, commander Yokoyama, his crewman Kamida, and I went to the offircer's mess that normally enlisted men couldn't enter." "We ate a farewell dinner." "Later there was a small party in the offircers wardroom." "Dewa watched his friends enter the midget sub and spoke to Yokoyama one last time over a phone link." "I said something like, "take care" to them." "I didn't say anything special, just words of parting said on the phone, very normal." "Even though the fact that they wouldn't return was a foregone conclusion, we didn't talk about it." "The midget carried by Dewa's submarine was the firrst to leave released into the water around 1 a.m." "By 3 a.m., all the midgets were making their way toward the harbor except the one skippered by ensign Sakamaki." "he was having trouble with his gyroscope." "Without it, he'd have to take his bearings on the surface... and risk being spotted by an American ship." "You're sneaking into a harbor and you don't want to trip the alarm and let the Americans know that the war has begun." "And so you must be extremely nervous." "You've got to be just on pins and needles." "And then-the firrst missed opportunity for the Americans." "At 3:42 a.m., an offircer on board the minesweeper Condor spotted a periscope in the water, firfty yards off the port bow." "Condor alerted the ward... patrolling the approaches to Pearl Harbor." ""I remember about 3, three thirty or so we, skipper called general quarters about 3:20 3:30." "I don't remember the exact time remember that?" "And we thought what kind of skipper is this he just came aboard and now we've got general quarters and he's middle of the night gonna start drilling us and we thought remember, we thought it was just a drill" "that skipper was gonna be a tough one to live with but he was one of the best skippers we ever had, remember?"" "But the ward's new skipper misunderstood the message and went to look in the wrong place." "The one thing Japanese planners feared most had occurred." "Four hours before the attack, one of their ships had been spotted." "And nothing happened." "Sunday, December 7 around dawn." "Aboard the six aircraft carriers, the pilots and planes of the firrst wave began to assemble." "Yamamato's plan called for two distinct waves of attack the firrst to reach Honolulu at about 8 a.m." "The second to follow within the hour." "It meant getting the right aircraft into the air at the right time... each wave would take about firfteen minutes to launch" "The firrst to go were 43 Mitsubishi firghters armed with machine guns and cannon." "The dreaded Zeroes." "Then 49 Nakajima bombers "Kates"" "each carrying a single 1760 pound armor-piercing bomb." "51 Aichi dive bombers were next to leave the Vals." "And, fiinally, another 40 "Kates" carrying specially modifired torpedos." "At about 6:20 am, the planes formed up and headed south." "At almost the same time the firrst wave turned toward Oahu, the U.S. Navy got its second report of intruders near the harbor." "At 6:30 a.m., a lookout on the freighter Antares spotted another submarine periscope, then a conning tower." "Once again the ward raced to investigate and this time, the destroyer found what she was looking for." "This submarine started to surface and I'm midships, right at the rail, when I see this thing start to surface." "I thought, wow, what's this?" "Then the skipper took after this submarine." "And of course we didn't know it at the time but later on he told us that his firrst thought was rammin g it but he said, this is my firrst ship and I don't want to ruin it." "And then all of a sudden number one gun firred and they missed because their elevation wasn't great enough and we were that close." "And then number three gun firred and I saw the splash of the water at the waterline of the conning tower as the shell hit the conning tower." "It must have rang like a bell," "I mean it must have been an incredible explosion that went off right next to their head." "I mean, remember the skipper is standing in the conning tower and the shell hit the conning tower." "You would think he was, must have died instantly." "Or did he?" "Because they then began to dive, so clearly they weren't dead." "And they then began to dive and no sooner did they dive than the depth charges are going off." "And then they exploded and I didn't see the submarine as it came up but I'm told that it came up, rolled over and then went back down again." "After the depth chargers that we dropped" "I can't see any way it could've gotten away from us." "At 6.51 a.m., skipper William outerbridge of the ward radioed headquarters that he had seen and firred upon an unidentifired submarine." "He repeated the message two minutes later." "At headquarters, the ward's terse report slowly worked its way up the chain of command." "For the second time that morning, the Japanese had tripped the alarm- and for the second time nothing happened." "Day 10 of Ballard's search... and still no sign of what they're looking for." "We were patrolling along in here." "The submarine was coming this way, we were coming this way." "Why was this one on the surface?" "Maybe he's not sure but maybe the passenger in the small submarine, they are looking and they make sure the position." "So far, Ballard has covered about two square miles of seabed... in an area called the flats where the ward was patrolling." "So far they've seen a lot of debris, but the missing sub has eluded them." "Each time they pick up a promising target on sonar, it turns out to be something else." "A crumpled seaplane, used by the Navy in the late 20's and 30's" "a Grumm an Hellcat firghter." "Then part of a similar type of midget sub captured later in the war, and then dumped." "And, fiinally, something that seems to have treads." ""You think so?" "Yeah, it's a tank." "It's a tracked vehicle." "Well, let's work it over."" "Another day's search is coming to an end without results." "Well we've exhausted all our targets." "Yup there's nothing left to look at." "Alright, well, the only thing left is the base of the wall and that the sub does so let's call it a wrap and pull it up, okay?" "Out of the pool." "Well, it's not out on the flats so the only place left is up against the wall." "So tomorrow we'll come out with the two subs and take it right in next to the channel and look at the base of the wall which we couldn't do with these vehicles." "They've used up most of their allotted two weeks with nothing to show for it." "For Bob Ballard and his team, time is runnin g out." "December 7th, 1941 7 am." "A mobile radar station on the northwest coast of Oahu picked up the signal of a massive number of aircraft approaching the island from the north." "They were less than 140 miles away, moving at 180 miles an hour." "A telephone call went immediately to the information center in Honolulu, 40 miles to the southeast." "The call was routed to a private named Macdonald, who passed it on to a Lieutenant Tyler who had just been assigned to the job." "Tyler told the radar operators not to worry about it." "In his mind, it was just a squadron of American B-17s due in from the mainland." "For the third time that day, the Japanese had tripped the alarm... and for the third time, no one seemed to notice." "It was 7:15 am." "At 7:40 a.m., the firrst wave of airplanes reached the coast of Oahu, guided by the signal from a Honolulu radio station." "The bombers and torpedo planes were at 9,000 feet." "5,000 feet above them, the Zeroes flew cover." "The firrst wave began to break up into their attack formations one to fly inland towards wheeler airfireld the other to move down the western coast to Pearl Harbor." "They were the only planes in the sky." "There was no sign whatsoever that the Americans knew they were about to be attacked." "At 7:50 a.m., the firrst wave reached Pearl Harbor." "Among their firrst targets..." "Hickam airfireld and the naval air base on Ford Island." "Clarence Minor was an airman stationed on Ford Island." "After all that noise on the tin roof up there and stuff was popping around." "And looked up and I saw this airplane come diving down and that big meatball and I said 'oh shit!" "'" "And then all hell all over the place was breaking loose." "Bombs dropping and machine guns firring, and like I said those things are so darned low you could throw rocks at them." "Ralph Lindenmyyer was also on Ford Island." "7:55 in the morning, an explosion woke us up." "And I looked up at the clock when I firrst heard the explosion and felt it and I said 'the Japs are here. '" "And when I looked out the window, the plane came over and I saw the meatball on the fuselage and the wing and I could look into the pilot's face and I can almost see him grinning g" "Anchored on pier 1010 was the utility vessel Argonne, where 19 year old Charles Christiensen worked in the machine shop." "And I thought oh that was a bad explosion." "I wonder what happened." "And I opened the port hole up and I stuck my head right on, out there you know and oh boy was there ever a firre on Ford Island." "I thought 'oh my goodness, something is really bad blowing up over there. '" "It took a while for sailors in the ships at anchor to comprehend what was happening." "Bert Davis, a machinist mate on the USS selfridge, thought it was some kind of readiness drill." "That's where I was standing when the plane came in," "I was standing there shining my shoes, and I, I saw these planes coming in." "Came in and came right straight across to where the Raleigh was and I thought to myself what in the hell is the army doing holding maneuvers on a day like this?" "While the dive bombers hammered the airfirelds, the torpedo planes descended to an altitude of a few dozen feet" "and took dead aim at battleship row." "Aboard the Argonne," "Charles Christiensen had a perfect view of the firrst torpedo run." "He's coming in almost straight across me at a slight angle across." "And he's low enough that he's maybe 30 feet off of the water, which puts him maybe eye level or a little more for me." "And I can see the man's face." "He's got his helmet on, he's got his goggles on and he's looking over the side." "And when he straightened that plane out, levelled it out, he dropped that torpedo." "And I thought 'oh my god look at that. '" "And that torpedo just went as straight for the Oklahoma as it could go." "This photo, taken from a Japanese plane shows battleship row just after the attack began." "The ripples emanating outward are the result of multiple torpedo strikes." "George Smith was below deck on the battleship Oklahoma when general quarters sounded." "All of a sudden a guy come over the loud speaker and just says 'no shit, move it!" "'" "And then we got a torpedo." "I was really so scared I didn't know what the hell was going on." "The Oklahoma started to capsize almost immediately." "When they said abandon ship, the only way we could get out was through the casement window." "We went out there and the ship was rolling on top of us." "Maybe we jumped about 5 feet into the water which wasn't far." "But when you turn around and see this thing coming on top of you, you swim for all you can swim and as fast as you can swim." "Because we know we had to get around the big gun turrets, they were coming over next on us." "It went over so fast I, I just was sure," "I didn't know, but I was sure they were trapped inside of that." "Because it, it just rolled right on over." "And there it was keel up." "George Smith had just been released from the Oklahoma's brig... for going ashore without leave..." "and it saved his life." "And when the ship got the torpedo." "The brig was in the carpenter shop on board ship and when the torpedo hit, it broke the carpenter's workbench loose, pinned the guard against the wall, the bulkhead, and he couldn't release the other men that were in the brig" "and they all drowned." "On the far side of Ford Island, the old battleship Utah also got hit a few minutes before eight." "Clark Simmons worked on the Utah as a mess attendant." "And as I looked out the port, I saw a plane making a run on the Utah." "And as she dropped her torpedo the wing dipped and then he straightened up, and the torpedo hit it, and another one right behind it did the same thing." "And we knew it was just a matter of time before the ship was going to sink." "And actually it took eight minutes, and eight minutes to the ship, was history." "She had turned turtle in eight minutes." "As the lines began to part, came over the side and began to swim toward Ford Island, and as we were swimming g they were machine gunning g us from both directions." "From this direction and when they came from Pearl City over here, from that direction also." "I saw fellows yelling and screaming, some of fellows was in the water was asking for help." "It was just, it was so chaotic, I really didn't know what was going on." "But the biggest blow was yet to come." "Lying inboard of the repair ship vestal was the battleship Arizona." "High overhead a Kate released an armor-piercing bomb that drifted down towards the Arizona's number two gun turret." "It was ten minutes after eight." "A motion picture camera captured the moment of impact." "In that instant, more than a thousand crewmen died." "Stu Hedly was on the West Virginia, a few hundred feet away." "One gigantic explosion." "Now when we firred the 16 inch, you're inside, it sounds like thunder off in the distance." "But this didn't sound like no thunder." "This was one gigantic explosion." "The stern of our ship lifted out of the water but at the same time we were getting hit with torpedoes, we were starting to list." "But we saw about 32 men flying through the air from the Arizona." "Oil from the fully fueled Arizona began to spread and catch firre." "The heat was so intense even sailors on nearby ships were threatened." "So Clausen and I stripped right down to our undershorts and jumped in and swam underwater." "Now we're not underwater swimmers." "But we swam underwater that day because that was the hottest breath of air we ever breathed because that was the oil from the Arizona that was ablaze." "The bomb had penetrated Arizona's forward magazine and ignited more than a million pounds of gunpowder." "Those who were still alive found themselves in an inferno." "They were in this oil that was on firre." "They were trying to swim out of it." "They'd come up and trying to get their breath." "Their eyes, the white of their eyes was just as red as they can be." "I, I can just see it today." "The skin on their face was just falling off." "And on top of that all of this oil, they were just drenched in oil." "Bert Davis went out in a whaleboat to pick up survivors." "Oh God it was horrible." "This one fellow started to reach up to try to get a hold of the gunwale on the boat from the outside and I reached down to try to help him." "And I took him by the arm and as I tried to lift like that, the skin came, all came off." "He was dead by the time we got him in." "Thirty-firve minutes after the attack began, the firrst wave flew away, leaving behind more than a thousand dead American sailors... many of them teenagers, caught belowdecks, when Arizona exploded and sank." "Six decades after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Arizona still lies where she sank with her cargo of sailors." "Most of their bodies have never been recovered." "Her superstructure was removed during the war." "Only the mount of her number three turret remains above water." "The Arizona was built nearly a century ago... and she's spent more than half that time underwater." "The national park service, which is responsible for maintaining the memorial, periodically checks on her condition" "her passageways and hatches her 14 inch guns." "The interior of the ship is too dangerous for divers, so it's never been investigated by the park service, until now." "With the help of a tiny RO V made available by National Geographic, workers will get their firrst glimpse of Arizona's condition deep inside the ship since about the time she went down." "The initial survey reveals that the corrosion is worse than expected." "And that may portend an ecological disaster because of something happening deep inside the ship." "The Arizona has been leaking an estimated two pints of oil a day ever since she sank- but the park service is worried that the remaining fuel tanks of the ship's bunkers could rupture at any moment." "Current estimates are that there is approximately a half a million gallons possibly in the bunkers on the aft section of the ship." "And so with current technology can we get to those bunkers and what's happening with the metal on the hull and the internal portions of the ship." "And so that is what we're trying to do is fiind out is there a way that we can contain that oil." "Today, the oil has begun to leak from more places than ever." "To understand the extent of the threat to Pearl Harbor, the park service is conducting a detailed survey of the Arizona." "Dan Lenihan is a park service diver and archeologist." "If it's all released at once, it will probably be a major problem." "For the park service, the challenge it to avert a fiinal catastrophe:" "an oil spill in the middle of Pearl Harbor." "There's no excuse for having this happen here." "There's no excuse for not knowing enough about this ship that is would go to the point that we would have a travesty like that on our hands." "We need to get ahead of it and fiind out what's happening." "The problem is complicated by the ship's designation as a gravesite- and by the oil's symbolic meaning." "Many visitors and survivors to the Arizona memorial consider the oil to either be the tears of the ship or that the ship is bleeding we'll also be dealing with that emotional feelings that people have about the oil and the signifircance." "It'll be a balance between what protecting the ecosystem is all about and protecting the tomb, the shrine that this place symbolizes." "Joining the park service on its survey is National Geographic underwater photographer David Doubilet." "Even though parts of the Arizona were salvaged... and the rest is slowly corroding- it is still impressive closeup." "These huge naval rifles." "They could firre something that weighed something almost the weight of a Volkswagen 20 miles away." "The Arizona, in fact every battleship, was built around these main armaments." "We gotta fiind out number 31." "Hidden in the oily murk of Pearl Harbor, gun turret number one was forgotten for forty years." "Now Doubilet is trying to document its massive guns for National Geographic Magazine." "Almost every problem that I had related to visibility." "One foot fall, a fiin stroke, would kick up this very very soft mud, and the clouds would billow out of the bottom and the visibility would drop instantly from a my wonderful 7 feet or 5 feet down to nothing." "The guns are as long as a bus, and bringing enough light down here to photograph them is an arduous operation." "Doubilet needs a crew of six people, to bring this submerged shrine to life." "His moody images recall the ghostly legacy of the Arizona." "I think I got the shot." "The shot of the three main guns of turrent number one." "And they come out of the gloom like three fiingers, and I'm looking up at them with a green background in the background." "It's very gloomy, it's very dark." "And Dan Lenihan from the Park Service is down examining the central barrel of the guns it's a very gloomy, secret picture of the Arizona." "To its survivors, the Arizona is much more than a sunken ship." "This national park is probably the only one that has the intense emotional reaction that this one does to all visitors." "And the survivors have taught me that." "I mean the survivors have really shown me what it is to be an American." "And I'm probably the strongest American you'd fiind out, after having worked here for firve years." "I think this place can really teach what the price of war is and what the price of freedom is." "Inside the memorial a wall lists the 1177 service men who dies on the battleship." "Every returning survivor knew someone who died on December 7th." "They never had a chance." "They didn't know what was coming." "Nobody knew about it." "They never woke up."" "Aloha, aloha." "I was going to ask you for a hug but I'm gonna get one anyway." "Big, big hug." "I thought maybe that you wouldn't want to hug an ugly old man like..." "I do, I do." "Carl Carson was a twenty year old sailor on the Arizona the day she went down." "he decided to come back to Pearl Harbor when doctors told him he didn't have much longer to live." ""I lost a lot of good dear friends over there." "It's just awful hard to even think about it." "And I almost lost my own life." "I hope I can make it over there all right." "Carl has never talked very much about what happened to him that day." "Now, at last, it's time." ""This is where I came out of, turret 3 here." "Came back on this." "There used to be ladders up and down and I came up the turret and went down the..."" "I was out on deck doing the morning chores all of a sudden this plane come along and didn't pay much attention to it because planes were landing at Ford Island all the time." "And all of a sudden the chips started flying all around me and the plane it was strafiing me." "And uh somebody hollered it's the damn Japs, get under cover." "The bomb went off, I learned later, it was back about turret number 4 about where I've been working about 10, 15 minutes before." "And evidently it knocked me out, ruptured both my lungs and I got smoke inhalation." "And all the lights went out." "I don't know how long I laid there." "But when I woke up it was no panic down there or anything." "But there was smoke and water knee deep." "I ran into a friend of mine that he was crying and, and asking me for help." "And I looked at him in horror." "And the skin on his face and his arms and everything was just hanging off like, like a mask or something." "And I took hold of his arm." "Skin all came off in my hand." "And there, there was just nothing in this world I could do for that boy." "And that has bothered me all my life." "Well they gave the word to abandon ship and we just practically stepped off of the quarter deck into the water and I guess I must have passed out." "And went down in the water and everything was just as peaceful and nice that it would have been so easy to just let go." "And I saw this bright light and something made me come to." "And so I got back up to the surface of the water and, and oil all around." "And I had water in my, oil in my teeth, down in my throat and everything." "Tasted horrible." "I still taste it today." "And the oil was a firre all around." "A man saw me down there and the firre was approaching me, wasn't but two feet from me and he reached down and pulled me up out of the water." "And that man saved my life." "Bob Ballard has spent the entire mission searching the flats outside the harbor... without fiinding any sign of the lost midget sub." "This is a mile, so what we're going to do we are going to drop you down here at the base." "Now he's turning his attention to the steep coral escarpment runnin g roughly parallel to the shore- an area he calls the wall." "In an expedition like this you have to put your mind in the mind of the commander of the submarine because his actions are gonna defiine the size of the search area." "What he does at that moment is going to tell you how big a search area you have to have." "Clearly if he was killed outright then you didn't have to put yourself in his mind at all because he's dead and he's going to be right were they say he sank." "But if he's still alive, he's going to then take certain evasive actions and you have to then say, well if I were that person, what would I do?" "And there were two options he had." "One was to continue forward into Pearl Harbor or the other was to turn and run for the high seas." "If the midget made a run for the high seas, and sank farther out, there's no hope of fiinding it in the remaining time." "But if it had continued toward the harbor," "Ballard's team might stand a chance with the help of their own miniature submersible." ""Head north turn left."" "The one disadvantage of using a submersible is that Ballard's team won't be able to see what the sub pilot is seeing during the dive." "They'll have to rely on his descriptions over the radio... and look at a videotape later." "We've landed the sub." "It's going to land about 200m of water, head due north." "As you can see the airport's right there so it's going to run into something and it's going to run into a wall, and then it's going to head west along that wall, because if the submarine hit against that wall" "it's going to fall down to the base." "So we're going to spend the day exploring the base of the steep scarp that leads right up the channel into Pearl Harbor." "To me deepworkers look like sort of manned robots." "They've got a human inside of them but they have this big, you know, this exoskeleton." "But what they do is they permit a person to be highly maneuverable." "They can spin on their axis." "And they can go into very dangerous places because they're so small." "In the control room, all anyone can do is listen to the squawk box." "They just reported fiinding a pile of batteries and this submarine was a lot of batteries." "So, starting to look like, smell like, but we're not sure." "Then the sub pilot spots a torpedo." "We're right where it should get interesting and it is getting interesting." "He's picked up a torpedo and debris right in the area where we'd expect the submarine to have impacted with the wall." "Ballard feels they are getting close but they can't be sure of anything until they retrieve deepworker..." "and take a look at the video tape." "December 7th, 8:35 a.m. and the beginnin g of a brief, twenty minute lull in the action." "At airfirelds all over the island, crews scrambled to clear the runways so American planes could get in the air." "Anti-aircraft guns were made ready." "Field hospitals were set up to take care of the wounded... many of them burn victims." "The firrst stories of individual acts of heroism began to make the rounds." "One of them was about a mess attendant on the West Virginia named Dorrie Miller." "Miller had carried the wounded captain of his ship to safety, then taken up a machine gun and shot down at least two Japanese planes." "What made the story remarkable is that" "Dorrie Miller had never handled a machine gun, much less trained on one because he was black and like all African-Americans in the 1941 Navy, restricted to the lowest ranking jobs." "Fourteen men received America's highest military award... the medal of honor... for their heroism on that day..." "but Dorrie Miller wasn't one of them." "He got the Navy cross instead." "The only reason why he didn't get the congressional medal is because he was black." "You know the Navy being what it was at that time you only could be a servant to the offircers." "He never gave any thought for his life or anything, he grabbed a machine gun and started blasting away over the side of the ship." "What he did was courageous and many of us thought that man should have been given the congressional medal of honor"" "Two years after Pearl Harbor," "Dorrie Miller died when his ship went down, torpedoed by a Japanese submarine." "Pearl Harbor 8:55 a.m." "The seas were still boiling with smoke and flame when the second wave of the Japanese attack struck the island." "This time, 167 aircraft split into two main groups." "One headed inland." "The other hugged the eastern coast, and continued south to Pearl Harbor." "But this time, the Americans fought back." "The smoke in the harbor was now so thick the Japanese pilots had trouble seeing their targets." "One of their targets was the battleship Nevada, with a hole in her side, steaming toward the channel." "Dive bombers honed in on the crippled giant." "If they could sink the battleship now, it might block the channel and trap the fleet in the harbor." "With all of these planes coming in when the, Nevada got under way the planes come in, dive bombing that." "It looked like bees coming back to the hive." "There were so many of them in there at one time that it was amazing that they didn't collide." "With bombs falling all around," "Nevada's commander was able to run his ship aground on hospital point which kept her from sinking and left the channel clear." "By ten o'clock, it was over." "he second wave of attackers headed back to their carriers, leaving behind a shattered Pacifirc Fleet." "December 7th 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United Sates of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan" "The United States was at peace with that nation." "On the mainland, Americans were stunned by the news they we're hearing from Pearl Harbor." "Every American alive over 65 years of age can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they got the news." "It was unifying event." "It brought us together." "Nothing else could have done it in that way." ""And Attacked by Japan on Sunday December 7th 1941" "President Roosevelt addressed the Congress the following day." "a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire."" "And by December 11 th, the United States was at war with Germany and Japan, plunging it into a conflict that would forever change its place in the world." "Back in Pearl Harbor, one problem survivors faced was notifying people back home that they were okay." "The Navy told us that everybody sent a postcard home to your parents letting them know everything is all right." "Well I got one of the last postcards out of there and I sent it home on December the 9th is exactly when I sent it home." "And my mother didn't get that post card until February the firrst week of February some time." "I don't know why it took so long but that's what it did." "She didn't know if I was alive or dead." "When the mailman got the card at the post offirce, he closed down the offirce and ran all the way to my house." "He woke my mother and step father up at 6:00 in the morning and told them, your son's ok." "Here's a card." "Ha, I still have that card." "My mom she couldn't be, believe it." "I get emotional when I think about it." "How she says she, she felt." "I just don't know it just turns me on." "Jack McCarron had been married to his high school sweetheart Roberta for seven weeks when the attack came." "It wasn't until Christmas day that she found out what had happened to her husband..." "who was stationed on the Arizona." "The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your husband John Harry McCarron, gunners mate second US Navy has been reported wounded in action in the performance of his duty and in the service of his country." "This was received by me" "Christmas morning, 7 am, December 25th, 1941." "Yuck." "You know I hate to say this but in my entire 81 years of living that was the worst time in my entire life was to have received this telegram." "Because I had no idea whether or not my husband of 49 days was alive or dead." "Lying in a hospital on Oahu, badly burned," "Jack decided to spare his new wife the horror of seeing him again." "I said tell Roberta to forget about me and go back to Saugus, cause you know I had been burned and I had my, I didn't look like me," "I guess my face and my hair was only like a, you know, short." "On top of which it being Christmas." "I was 3000 miles away from my home." "3,000 miles away from my husband." "I didn't know anybody." "I guess I never did write to you for, I didn't write to her for a long time." "The state of shock I was in was almost as bad as his." "Some time passed before I, I probably started coming out of it and I was aboard ship and you know I love this girl." "And now I realize that if I was going to survive it would be with her." "My friends and shipmates took me over to the sick bay at Ford Island." "And they laid me alongside the bulkhead over there." "I looked over another ship mate laying across from me against the bulk head and he was holding his intestines in with his hands." "And he looked up at me and he said that it sure, war sure is hell isn't it, shipmate." "And I said yeah it is." "Well, lately I was diagnosed with stomach cancer and I don't firgure I have too many more years to live and I thought that perhaps I might be a poor spokesman so to speak for my shipmates in telling my story so that they wouldn't be forgotten" "and that's the one and only reason that I came back." "And I'm a kind of a private person." "It's been hard to do." "But I think it was time that it needed to be told." "And I think it has been well worth it." "I, I feel a lot better now." "It's the fiinal day of the search, and Ballard has had his machines in the water for hours." "But he's not hopeful about the outcome." "We're in the fiinal throes of this expedition." "I mean today's the last day, we have two subs going in the water right now, but we're, you know it doesn't look good because we've looked at all the high priority sites and we haven't found the midget submarine." "We're now out in the very low priority areas and that can go on forever because it's a big ocean." "So I'd be very surprised if we succeeded today." "Deepworker returns from its pass at the wall and is hoisted out of the water for the fiinal time." "With it is a videotape of the debris it encountered." "The news isn't encouraging." ""We have a possibility but I'm personally not hope it..." "A quick review of the videotape confirrms Ballard's fears." "On closer examination, what had looked to the sub pilot like a pile of batteries turns out to be something else." ""Looks like anti aircraft gun clips isn't that what it looks like to you" "And the torpedo the pilot spotted has had its warhead removed... so it can't be from the lost midget sub." "You reach a moment when you know you're not going to succeed because you've given it the best shot you're going back over the same territory seeing the same targets for the second or third time." "Well, we've found a bunch of junk." "We don't really have a defimitive set of objects that says that the submarine broke up but it could have." "So... clearly the sub did not survive" "and did the ward play a role in its demise?" "Certainly it did." "But how did it fiinally meet its end?" "Gloriously in battle in Pearl Harbor?" "Was it sunk by someone else later on?" "What was it's fiinal moments?" "And for now we don't know what they were." "The mystery of what happened to the midget subs would have been even deeper." "Had it not been for a surprise development on the morning of December 8th, 1941." "in the early morning hours, a small submarine washed ashore on Oahu's east coast." "It was the one piloted by ensign Kasuo Sakamaki... the sub with the gyroscope problems." "Sakamaki also washed ashore exhausted and delirious." "He was captured before he could kill himself... and thus became America's firrst prisoner of war." "Of the ten submariners who set out before dawn on the 7th," "Sakamaki was the only one who survived." "Historians have generally labeled the submarine mission a failure... since only one midget that we know of entered the harbor... and was sunk during the attack after firring two harmless torpedos." "But analysis of a photo taken from a Japanese airplane just as the battle began suggests something else." "It shows battleship row already under attack a few minutes after eight and in the water just beyond a shadowy shape that appears to be a small submarine and the wake of a torpedo aimed directly at the West Virginia." "While some historians remain skeptical, that analysis could explain a message Dewa received on the night of the 7th- more than twelve hours after the attack." "It came from his friend, ensign Yokoyama." ""Successful surprise attack."" "Then silence." "Yokoyama's sub never made the rendezvous... and neither did any of the others." "For years Dewa has wondered what happened to Yokoyama and all the others who didn't come back." "All he knows is that somewhere, in these waters they died, as they expected they would." "Of course I hoped they would return, but the commander told me." "If I come back I'll come back with a wolf as we say in Japan and put the mother sub in danger so I don't think they planned to return even if they had succeeded." "Before he set out on his mission one of the submariers left behind a poem he'd written earlier that day." "AS THE CHERR Y BLOSSOMS FALL" "AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR GLOR Y" "SO, TOO, MUST I FALL" "THAT MEN MAY CALL ME" "A FLO WER OF YAMOTO," "THOUGH MY BONES LIE SCATTERED" "IN THE BLEAK WILDERNESS" "OF STRANGE AND DISTANT LANDS." "On the last day of his visit, Dewa asks to see the Arizona memorial to pay his respects to the Americans who died on December 7th." "America and Japan must have had their reasons for starting a war." "But after coming here and seeing the waves of the Pacifirc" "I question why we had to go to war." "Japan and the United States are brothers." "Pacifirc peace is world peace." "This trip has made me feel that together we must protect it." "Jack McCarron and Carl Carson are also there to remember their ship and their shipmates." "Underwater, the National Geographic camera prowls through the empty ship, these are the firrst images of the offircer's quarters." "images from a another era, frozen in time." "A bathroom, with it's regulation soap dish." "An offircer's deskits papers still arranged in their pigeon holes" "a washbasin now fiilled with sand beneath a shaving mirror" "For Jack McCarron, the pictures of his old ship are almost too painful to bear." ""For over 40 years over 40 years I couldn't if I was asked I couldn't talk I didn't talk about it," "I didn't think about it, I had erased it from my mind" "I didn't have any memories," "I really didn't" "I saw that barnacles on that doorknob, and the lights overhead, and I thought who was that offircer down there, did he survive?" "At one time that knob was real nice and shiny and he turned on that light to read." "I don't remember the ship as that."" "The legacy lives on in a Navy ship called the U.S.S. Pearl Harbor." "For survivors, a journey on this ship is a chance to see the advances that have taken place over the decades" "and to participate in some things that never change." "Wandering through the galley," "Clark Simmons recalls his service in the segregated Navy of 1941." "There was only one duty open to you." "And that was serving the offircers." "I've been very impressed by the achievements of the black Americans abord the ward the young ladies." "Some of the leading pay off abord the ship of Black Americans," "I don't know the word should put it, how happy I am to see the things that they have done" "For veterans like Charles Christiensen, this is a chance to pass on the legacy of the battle to a new generation of sailors." "'Oh, I look at them and I see me when I was eighteen when I joined" "I was nineteen when the attack went off'." "I can't even imagine it." "I mean I can't imagine if I would panic or not." "I can't imagine my world being turned upside down, and my whole world to be on firre." "For three days after the attack, the Arizona continued to burn." "The fiinal totals from the surprise assault were staggering." "More than 2400 deaths and almost 1200 wounded." "21 ships of the U.S. Pacifirc Fleet had been sunk or damaged, including all eight battleships." "Over 300 airplanes had been put out of commission." "Admiral Yamamato had accomplished everything he set out to do... except destroy the American aircraft carriers." "And in the firghting to come, that would proved to be a critical failure." "One of the best things that ever happened to the United States was our carriers were not involved in the attack." "Yamamato sank battleships." "The battleship was not the queen of the seas any longer after that day." "From now on it's the aircraft carrier." "And the attack on Pearl Harbor for all of the losses of live, which comes firrst of course, and the losses of ships, they didn't sink any aircraft carriers and that made, what was already a very bad mistake on Japans part even worse." "But perhaps the greatest miscalculation was how the defeat would affect the American firghting spirit." "Instead of a crippling blow, it became a rallying cry." "The next morning, the firre was still burning, and there was the ships, some of them not for sure some of them still had the flag flying from yesterday, and at 8 o'clock guess what?" "These ships were sitting there in the mud, its time to raise the flag and there's the American flag flying, everything is fline." "And then the Americans went to work." "Every ship that had been hit except the Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma was refloated, repaired, and put back into service." "Many would take part in the battles yet to come..." "Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa" "And so would the men who survived that day." "I grew up in the Navy." "I learned a lot." "When I came out of the Navy I was 6ft even, weighed 200lb." "I actually grew up." "I learned to be, you could say, a man." "When I walk with the Pearl Harbor survivors especially when I have my uniform on I walk very proud." "I represent the country and I will represent it 'til the day I die." "And I will always be proud to be part of it." "Well Pearl Harbor to me is like beginning g a new life." "I may be a certain age but it seemed that I was reborn that day." "Pearl Harbor survivors are special." "They have a feeling for each other and for their country." "They have a comradeship that is not matched anywhere in the civilian world." "The only people that I've ever met that have that kind of comradeship are foxhole buddies." "These guys were in foxholes together," "It's not a feeling of 'we showed them, ' it's not a feeling of triumph." "It's a feeling of we did it together, we were there, and that's what matters." "It's kind of a hallowed place." "It's very beautiful." "I'm amazed that it's this beautiful." "And I understand that this millions of visitors every year that come by to pay their respects to my shipmates." "To a lots of them I know a lot of them they were just names but to me they'll always be my shipmates." "I don't think we'll ever be done with Pearl Harbor." "I think Pearl Harbor is like Gettysburg, it's like Appamatox its like Lincoln's assassination it's like Yorktown and the surrender to General Washington." "God help our country if it's ever forgotten." "In the beginnin g, there is the fertilized egg." "Its form couldn't be simpler." "But this will change." "It's a piece of work to craft a creature from a single cell." "By the time it enters the world, every living thing has experienced an odyssey of alteration." "Change doesn't stop with hatching or birth." "Growing up is also a story of transformation." "A newborn kangaroo can grow over 50,000 times in weight." "Some creatures do far more than simply grow up." "They reinvent themselves." "A firsh can start life as a female but end up as a male." "A bird can grow or shrink a brain area for song to suit the season." "Polliwogs become frogs." "Caterpillars turn into butterflies." "We learn few more curious facts than these." "But it's easy to lose sight of just how astonishing these changes are!" "And even weirder transformers live among us." "Turn and face the strange." "Meet the body changers." ""Hey, Emma, come here!"" "Compared to the epic alteration of a caterpillar, our own changes may seem subtle." "But there's no denying that kids change shape as they turn into grown-ups." "The brain kicks off our own sexual transformations." "Girls tend to get curvier from estrogen and other hormones." "A child's body- and that of many other young creatures- changes shape when it reaches the age for reproduction." "These alterations prepare us to compete for mates, to have babies, and to care for them." "Boys change in their own way." "They add muscle." "Shoulders become broader." "The body gets hairier." "Vocal cords lengthen as does the jaw." "A child's journey to adulthood is a long one." "A grown-up is not just a scaled-up kid, but one rebuilt from head to toe." "Look back at the odyssey of growing up, and we see that even our faces change shape, starting in infancy with small chins, huge eyes, and plump cheeks." "We are all body changers when it comes to growing up and growing old." "It may be no accident that many baby animals have different face shapes from their parents." "Adults fiind baby features irresistible- a hard-wired system that promotes infant care." "Silvered leaf monkeys have Day-Glo offspring." "No one knows why, unless it's a reminder to rough-and-tumble mothers to handle the baby with care." "The young and old of many animals have different colors- sometimes to conceal newborns that are less able to flee danger." "A young, sexually mature male orangutan has a distinguished, mournful visage." "But in middle age, his face changes shape." "His new jowly look is a badge of power." "Changes in our own faces tell many stories." "A face that forms symmetrically in the womb and stays that way through adulthood can be a mark of good nutrition and resistance to disease." "Is it any wonder we are highly attuned to symmetry and fiind it beautiful?" "Old age brings new changes as our faces transform again, keeping a faithful record of wear and tear, loves and losses." "As we change ourselves in the subtle ways that human beings do, we're surrounded by creatures that become entirely new." "Around us are animals that live out the youthful fantasy of sprouting wings and flying like a bird." "But we also share the world with animals whose stories of change echo darker myths." "Hercules' enemy, the many-headed Hydra, sprouted two new heads for every one lopped off." "Nature nearly matches legend." "The salamander has powers of regeneration bordering on the magical." "It will need these talents, for it lives not in a fairy tale, but rather in a world of real dangers." "A red-eared slider enters the stream." "The salamander picks an unlucky moment for a swim." "It's a vulnerable creature, unarmored and undisguised." "The turtle has nipped off the salamander's hind leg." "Over three months, the creature miraculously transforms itself back to an earlier stage of life." "The genes that grew the leg in the firrst place are activated again." "The new leg will be indistinguishable from the original." "Unique among animals with backbones, the salamander can regrow not just limbs but the lens of the eye and even part of the brain." "This beast can survive a bite to the head!" "The Hydra lives." "The power to change shape or color offers a special edge in life." "Some creatures change to stay hidden." "Others transform to fiind new kinds of food." "Still other animals change for upward mobility- for the chance to fly or leap to another pond." "This lake is home to two body changers that can be lifelong rivals." "A dragonfly nymph spends the firrst part of its life beneath the surface." "Everything about this creature seems honed for water." "It is tapered for speed." "Its head has powerful jaws and huge eyes-the better to catch prey with." "It breathes through an anal gill- also handy for jet propulsion." "It's hard to believe that this pond predator- sleek as a torpedo, accurate and deadly" " Will one day take to the air." "Wings are already forming." "An amazing makeover is beginning g." "But the dragonfly will not be able to complete its body change without regular meals." "Sharing the pond are gray treefrog tadpoles." "You can't get any firshier than this without actually being a firsh." "A tadpole breathes through internal gills." "Its long flat tail propels it like a firsh's tail." "Inside, powerful front legs have formed and are nearly ready to burst out." "But not every ungainly swimmer will live to be reborn as an elegant leaper." "With a secret weapon locked and loaded, the dragonfly nymph waits for an opportunity." "Folded up under the nymph's head is a hinged lip with a grasping tip." "This tadpole's dreams of frogdom are dashed." "But in these death throes, a chemical is released which fellow tadpoles take to heart or to tail." "In two weeks, tadpoles in the area transform remarkably." "Their tails turn a shade of red." "The colored tail may protect tadpoles from attack like a neon sign flashing "Don't Eat."" "Why this works, no one is sure, but there's no need to turn tail with a tail turned red." "The pond is abuzz with changing bodies." "Not only are tadpoles about to turn into frogs, they've already changed colors." "At the age of firve weeks, tadpoles, both red" " And clear-tailed, shed their underwater ways." "Rear legs emerge slowly." "Front legs pop out of gill slits." "The tail is absorbed." "This frog may not have turned into a prince, but the tadpole's transformation is no less astonishing." "An air-breathing, bug-eating, lilly-hopping, sweet-singing adult has emerged from a silent scum-sucking swimmer with gills." "Now is the dragonfly nymph's time to change." "It's been lurking in the shallows by the shore, waiting for just the right moment to abandon the water forever." "Tonight is perfect-calm, since rain or wind could dislodge the dragonfly at a vulnerable moment." "The nymph has crawled out of the water and fastened itself to a stem." "It is now committed to the air." "A brand new creature emerges from the old." "The husk of the nymph splits open." "In a single magical hour, an adult struggles out." "At firrst, its goggle eyes look like deflated beach balls." "But soon they are pumped up to full size- some of the keenest eyes in the insect realm." "In the remaining hours before dawn, the dragonfly pumps blood into its soft, wet wings, doubling their length." "The dragonfly has changed from a jet-powered aquatic hunter armed with a hydraulic spear to a peerless aerialist that will stalk on the wing." "About two hours after emerging, the dragonfly takes flight." "Once master of the pond bottom, the dragonfly now controls the air space above." "No other insect devotes as big a share of its body weight to flight muscles as the dragonfly." "Scuba certifircation has been traded in for a pilot's license." "As larvae, dragonflies once hunted tadpoles." "Adult frogs sometimes have the chance to even the score." "A dragonfly is a curve ball on the wing." "There's nothing wrong with the occasional whiff if now and then you connect with a solid double." "Just as body changes can take place in individual creatures, so they can occur across generations." "That's evolution." "Natural selection is the long process of picking winners and losers among organisms that differ slightly from their parents." "Without body-changing over generations, evolution would come to a standstill." "As it is, change adds to change to create the entire parade of life." "Life may have begun with a blob that by chance transformed." "When alterations were successful, the transformer thrived and transformed again." "One of natural selection's winning picks is the trick of morphing during a single lifetime." "Plankton is a potpourri of larvae- body changers of many species at an early stage of life." "Creatures like this have an edge:" "each stage can be honed for a different job." "Now they are shaped for spreading around-drifting on the currents." "Soon these beasts will be changed beyond recognition into new forms tailored for feeding and reproduction." "One member of the plankton, a crab larva, starts life with scant resemblance to its parents." "It shares the ocean with another tiny drifter-the seaslug." "This relative of the snail hatches wearing a transparent shell- a suit of crystalline armor." "Seaslug and crab, similar as larvae, may confront each other as adults, as different as two animals can be." "Having shed its shell, the seaslug eventually becomes an adult four inches long." "It now has a new organ- a feeding hood." "The billowy hood caresses eel grass to catch food like skeleton shrimp." "Like a submarine Venus fly trap, the seaslug closes up, trapping prey like skeleton shrimp with a zipperlike seal." "Growing on the seaslug's back are other new organs- fleshy paddles that will soon save its life." "As the seaslug feeds, it is being watched by its former planktonmyate." "The crab has changed into a formidable scavenger with molar-like grinders on its claws." "Blind except perhaps to light and dark, the seaslug approaches danger." "The crab pinches at the seaslug- as hard to grab as a water balloon." "Finally the crab gets purchase." "But it gets only a small serving of seaslug, whose paddles pop off by design." "The seaslug swims away with wild undulations." "Only a stump remains where once there was a paddle." "The missing organ may eventually grow back." "Once a tiny drifter, this body changer is now rebuilt for escape." "Up the water column without a paddle, the seaslug leaves the crab, its fellow transformer, with a meager souvenir." "Transformation is not just the privilege of living things." "The morphing of clouds may offer nothing more than delight." "The morphing of bodies serves a more important goal: survival." "In the Arizona desert, the weather shifts late in June." "After eight crispy months, skies darken." "The monsoon has arrived." "The pounding of the rain has stirred strange creatures beneath the soil." "In this small, evaporating pond, animals race against the clock to transform." "Tadpoles of the spadefoot toad must absorb their tails, grow lungs, sprout legs." "They must transform from firsh-like swimmers with gills to hopping air-breathers." "If changing from tadpole to toad isn't miracle enough, tadpoles of this species have two ways to do it- the nice way and the not-so-nice." "In this hot summer, the pond is shrinking quickly." "It could become a death-trap- a cauldron of bouillabaisse." "As the water level drops, time is runnin g out for the tadpoles to become toads." "Meanwhile, another creature joins the fray." "Fairy shrimp may have lain dormant underground as eggs for years, waiting for just the right conditions to rush through their lives." "As the pool dries up, it gets more crowded." "Tadpoles bump into more and more of these crustaceans." "Advantage: tadpole." "If they end up snacking on lots of Sonoran scampi, the tadpoles sense that their pond is shrinking fast." "There's something about fairy shrimp that throws a chemical switch inside some of the tadpoles." "And these gentle browsers now begin to transform into brutes that will stop at nothing to become a toad." "Some of the tadpoles are turning into cannibals!" "This is body-changing with attitude." "The cannibals are lighter in color and larger." "A huge muscle forms in the jaw- the better to grab their neighbors with." "We're no longer on golden pond." "The cannibals grow at breakneck speed on their unneighborly diet." "On the fast track, they will need only two-and-a-half weeks to become toads." "The slower, mild-mannered tadpoles need six weeks to grow up." "The extra time helps them become healthier adults than the cannibals." "But often in the desert, time is a luxury." "And the race goes to the swift and brutal." "It was a remarkable turning point in evolution when a firsh transformed to emerge from the sea, gulp air and drag itself around." "But what took eons in evolution is an everyday occurrence in tadpoles." "To reach adulthood, spadefoot toads must live fast and hard, then dig down into cool damp soil before the next drought arrives." "For others in the desert, the season of change has also arrived." "On an acacia blossom, an egg barely visible to the human eye hatches." "A bristled beast emerges." "This caterpillar has a problem." "If it's ever going to become a butterfly, it must firrst survive its life as a larva." "The desert is alive with predators like ants and wasps." "This caterpillar has an ingenious defense." "It will soon enlist one of its enemies, but only after it transforms to develop special organs for manipulating ants." "At the base of the acacia tree, ants have dug a nest." "Most ants like nothing better than dismantling caterpillars." "But these ants love them-intact." "They will protect the caterpillar." "That's because the ants march to the beat of a different drumm er." "The caterpillar has become the drumm er." "This is the sound the caterpillar makes with body vibrations so tiny we can't see them." "But ants feel the beat through twigs and stems and come runnin g." "A strange rendezvous of two very different creatures is about to take place." "The caterpillar has, in effect, shouted to the ants," ""Come and get it!"" "It's not a ploy." "The caterpillar doles out sugary droplets which the ants lap up." "For the price of a few servings of food, the caterpillar is surrounded by friendly ants." "Not a bad thing to have the neighborhood toughs at your beck and call when you have a soft body and a nasty array of predators." "This remarkable relationship will last for most of the caterpillar's life." "The caterpillar now transforms into a new stage." "Tentacles have appeared- strange chemical transmitters- that seem to rile up the ants." "The caterpillar needs the ants to be ferocious: danger is near." "Another kind of ant lives nearby- a predatory species." "An enemy ant has grabbed the caterpillar." "The friendly ants rally in a desperate tug-of-war." "Not all battles can be won." "But without the aid of bodyguard ants, not as many caterpillars would live to become butterflies." "About ten days after hatching, the caterpillar descends the tree." "It's hard to believe this creature will soon shed its wormy form, sprout wings and head for the heavens." "But that is the miracle of a caterpillar." "Down in the enclave of the ant nest, the caterpillar is reborn as a pupa." "Hunkered inside what looks like a sarcophagus, the pupa is a creature in the midst of a total makeover." "Nerves are being rewired." "Old organs are dissolving;" "new ones are being built." "The ants tend this defenseless animal even though it will no longer feed them." "After ten days, one of the most radical redesigns in all of nature is complete." "The pupa has become an adult, a butterfly." "This creature's long relationship with ants is now over." "The butterfly struggles to emerge." "It must move quickly." "In fact, if the butterfly isn't out of the nest in minutes, it will be devoured by the same ants that protected it for almost its entire life." "As larvae, these creatures were basically enormous digestive tracts hauled around on caterpillar treads." "As adults, they are flying machines dedicated to sex." "If we couldn't witness a caterpillar turn into a butterfly, we'd never believe they were the same animal." "It's as astounding as a Cuisinart transforming into a 747." "Some animals undergo one major transformation in their lives." "Others change fashions every year with the seasons." "Dogs may wear heavy coats in winter." "But lengthening days will cause the fline underhairs to drop out." "Soon, this dog will be cooler in his new spring wardrobe." "Some animals change not only their coat but their color." "The arctic fox wears white for stealthy winter hunting." "By summer, the coat is less than half as thick." "Arctic birds like the ptarmigan also change color." "In summer, they're as mottled as the terrain." "By winter, the ptarmigan is a bird of a different color." "Other prey species like the arctic hare must track the seasons with their wardrobe." "Understatement is de rigeur." "If some animals change for the seasons on the outside, others are transforming on the inside." "All over North America, redwing blackbirds prepare for spring with remarkable changes." "Males arrive from winter havens to squabble for territories." "No one gets a home without singing for it." "But this male is out of practice." "He hasn't sung much at all for half a year." "But he's been quietly transforming." "It's now opening day of a new season of song." "The transformation was all in his head-literally." "The blackbird is a brain changer." "Over the past months, one tiny area in his brain devoted to song has more than doubled in volume." "With his new swelled head, this male now woos females with song." "When a female becomes all a-flutter, the serenade has succeeded." "The happy new couple flies off to the shrubbery." "It's time for a little two-in-the-bush." "The burgeoning brain of the male may have kept the sexes in tune this season." "Transformation promoted communication which helped launch the next generation." "Late in the summer, blackbirds glean the firelds for the last easy morsels." "Males will transform once again." "The brain's song area dwindles, along with sweet serenades for sex." "Birds are in good company when it comes to changing for reproduction." "For most of its life, a flowering plant makes stems and leaves, a single pattern repeated." "But when the right conditions arrive- of temperature, daylight, or rainfall- a plant will suddenly transform, producing a brilliant package of sex and advertising." "As one poet put it, "The flower is a leaf mad with love."" "Deer browse among blossoms, eating tender leaves and grasses." "A once flowering feast is transformed into a pile of dung." "In the leftovers of a deer's meal, two organisms will each struggle to survive." "A fungus begins to grow threads invisible to the human eye." "The fungus is transforming for reproduction." "It shoots up stalks as tall as an eyelash is long." "Each stem lifts ripening spores above the deer's ground zero." "Meanwhile, tiny larvae are growing." "The deer was infected with a roundworm." "To survive, these wriggling parasites must leave their dump of a neighborhood to reach a new deer." "So the worm climbs a fungus stalk." "Just below a black beret packed with spores, water pressure builds." "When the cap bursts, spores can be shot up to eight feet away." "And worms will fly." "One of the parasites lands several feet away." "A passing deer eats it- an inadvertent diet of worms." "The roundworm has found a host, and millions of scattered spores await their fate." "Wintertime." "And the living's hard in the far north." "At least for a relative of the deer... caribou." "The landscape is littered with body parts." "Antlers." "Up to 20 pounds of bone, grown every year and discarded." "Males start to grow antlers every spring- a transformation from bald to bedecked." "Antlers are living tissue crisscrossed with blood vessels and nerve endings." "The sensitive fuzzy skin is called velvet." "Each caribou has a signature pattern which can grow back year after year." "It would be no less wondrous if we were to sprout a fresh arm- the same arm-every year." "When antlers stop growing late in the summer, another transformation takes place." "The tender velvet dies and is scraped away until it hangs in tatters." "Each male is now crowned with spikes of unfeeling bone." "Fighting is one reason for the male caribou's transformation." "And this helps solve the mystery of why antlers shed their velvet:" "You can't firght a battle if your sword can bleed and is sensitive to the touch." "Some creatures grow head weaponry every year." "Others, only a single time." "Altogether, male caribou have plenty of company when it comes to transformations for battle." "If some animals transform what's on their head, others change what's in it." "This male's appearance and his personality will transform with his fortunes." "Meet a member of the cichlid family." "He's something of a piscine Austin Powers." ""Oh behave, baby!"" "He's the proud owner of a prime bachelor pad- about one square foot of lake bottom." "He's dressed for success- or, rather, because of it." "His dark stripes and sharp colors are the marks of a territory holder." "Nearby lurks a male with the dull colors of a wannabe." "In fact, he looks just like a female." "If firsh experience envy, this one covets his neighbor's life." "The flashy bachelor invites a female over to suck gravel." "This counts as fline dining in these shallows." "After dinner, the couple retires to the grotto for a little spawning." "There's only so much a guy can take." "The wannabe has switched on his colors- a kind of warpaint- to prepare for battle." "The wannabe wins." "And he is transformed by victory." "He retains his bright colors." "His grievances are redressed as much as he himself has been redressed in the wardrobe of a winner." "A more profound transformation will soon take place inside his body." "In a week his gonads will plump up thirty-fold in weight and a brain area dedicated to sex will increase eight times in volume." "At last the new bachelor is ready to take his enlarged gonads for a spin." "Guided by his bigger brain area for sex, he courts a female with macho motions and furling fiins." "But no male holds a long-term lease in these gravel beds." "The new owner soon discovers the high cost of upkeep for his pad." "Neighboring bachelors are always testing the lot lines." "A neighbor attacks." "The new territory holder is defeated." "He switches off his fancy colors." "His gonads and brain region for sex will soon shrink." "He rejoins the ranks of the wannabes." "Some body changers save their most dramatic transformations for the end of life." "Sockeye salmon are beckoned from the ocean back to the Alaskan streams where many hatched firve years ago." "Some must travel hundreds of miles in an odyssey that can take weeks." "Along the way, salmon will undergo one of the most remarkable changes in all of nature." "Head shape starts to change." "Every salmon will die by the journey's end." "The only question is whether they will get the chance to complete their transformation." "Many will be stopped here by a terrible gauntlet of brown bears." "On this journey of the condemned, the salmon throw themselves upriver with abandon." "The salmon that escape, especially the males, will now carry on with their transformation." "The head turns green and body red as the firsh prepare to die- on their own terms." "Few have made it this far." "Fewer yet will fimish the transformation." "Approaching the spawning grounds, the males achieve their fiinal shape." "A sleek silvery male, over a few weeks, transforms into a gaudy hunchback with a toothy grimace." "The skin turns smooth and unfirshlike as the body absorbs its scales." "In tatters after their journey, salmon arrive in the shallows where they hatched." "They've lost up to a third of their weight." "Not to mention their looks." "Only one in a thousand has completed this harrowing roundtrip." "With her own changed body, a female sweeps out a gravel nest and releases her eggs." "A male offers his swirl of milt." "This grotesque body change is still a mystery." "Does the male's hooked face help in jousting matches with rivals?" "Does the female choose a male for his new colors, a sexy but reckless display that draws the firre of predators?" "All that's certain is that this change is the creature's last." "And perhaps in death, the fiinal transformation, the parents offer their decaying bodies to feed the pools where the next generation will grow." "The life of every creature is a journey of change." "So too is the path of all life since the very dawn of living things." "Though we may resist change, or wish to turn back the clock, no one can tether time." "We are all transformers, for the story of life is the story of change." "I learned to look at the world through the eyes and ears of elephants." "Some people, other elephant people, have told me that I think I am an elephant." "In some ways, perhaps they are right." "Like Africa, the elephants take hold of your spirits." "They can possess you and persuades you to look at the world in a different light." "There is something so grand about the life of an elephant... its great size, strength, and age." "Elephants have so many of the qualities we like best about ourselves- dignity, loyalty to families and friends, compassion, and a sense of humor." "Biologist Joyce Poole has taken a journey, without maps, into the heart of the African elephant." "She came to know elephant like family." "She discovered biological forces no one had ever suspected, and elephant voices no human had ever heard." "For years, Joyce fought for their survival, never imagining that one day she would face a terrible choice." "Joyce Poole would have to give the order to kill elephants." "This is the story of a woman who loved elephants in a world that had no room for them." "Looking back at how it all began, it seems as if Africa has always been my home." "Joyce Poole's family came to Kenya in the 1960s when her father worked for the Peace Corps." "She grew up in Africa." "The family loved wild places and often camped in Kenya's Amboseli National Park." "I saw my firrst elephant as a child of seven, a huge bull in Amboseli." "And I remember asking my father what would happen if he charged the car." "And as my father said," ""He'll squash the car down to the size of a pea pod," he came." "I remember a lot from Amboseli." "It was one of our favorite places, but I remember most the elephants." "The swamps were home to a huge number of animals." "But it was always the elephants that captured my imagination." "At the age of 11," "Joyce knew what she was going to be when she grew up, a wildlife biologist." "When the time came to leave home, she went out to live among the elephants." "Her journey would soon change the way the rest of the world thought about elephants." "But in time, it would change Joyce, too, and turn all her dreams for the elephants into dust." "It began in the shadow of Kilimanjaro on the Kenya border." "Her new home was Amboseli National Park, where she had firrst encountered elephants." "Her mentor was Cynthia Moss, who had already embarked on the most comprehensive study of elephant society ever attempted." "Using a photo book with pictures of the elephants in Amboseli," "Cynthia taught Joyce how to identify individuals." "Just keep your eye on Tuskless." "Now look, here in this picture, you would say M-57 was older than M-22 because of the angle of his head." "Yes, Yes." "He's much younger." "The elephants also got to know the researchers." "Babies played on camp as if under the watchful eye of their own aunts." "At firrst, all the elephants looked alike to me... large and gray with big ears." "But Cynthia taught me how different each elephant really was." "Elvira." "Esmeraldo was born in 1948." "Joyce gradually learned to recognize individuals by their familiar features." "Vee was named for the V-notches in her ears." "Tuskless had no ivory." "Joyce was particularly fond of jezebel-a noble old matriarch with one tusk pointing skyward and the other straight ahead." "Each new arrival was given a name that identifired it as part of a specifirc family group." "Cynthia Moss's work was already revealing that elephant families formed an unusually complex society dominated by females." "But the lives of the males were still uncharted territory." "Males leave their families as teenagers and never again live in stable groups." "Alone in her car, Joyce followed them." "She was 19 years old and had no idea what she was getting into." "To study the males Joyce needed to get as close as possible." "But the shadow of a bull elephant was perilous place to be." "A male that seemed placid could easily turn around and impale her car on his tusks." "When I firrst started studying the males, there were many times when I had elephants corner me, tower over the car, and I thought it was all over." "Showing who's boss is something male elephants do from the time they're youngsters." "Most firghts aren't dangerous." "Size normally dictates rank and every male already knows where he firts in the social hierarchy." "But every once in a while, firghts turn deadly serious." "What was it that changed all the rules?" "Joyce noticed several older males dribbling gallons of urine." "Glandular secretions darkened the skin behind their eyes as if with tears." "She saw one elephant who also seemed to be suffering from a fungal infection she'd never seen it before, so she named him Green Penis." "But then other makes turned up in the same curious condition." "Joyce soon realized there was a pattern." "Each male had his own time of year when the symptoms appeared." "And it appeared at the same time every year." "In Asian elephants, these symptoms were already recognized as part of a male sexual cycle." "African elephants are a different species, and the experts all said they did not have such a cycle." "It took long months of tracking and recording the behavior of individual males, but Joyce proved the experts wrong." "At the age of 23, she had discovered a driving biological force that every other researcher had overlooked: it's called musth." "Musth is a heightened sexual and aggressive period or rut." "And the word musth actually comes from the Urdu meaning intoxicated." "Males start coming into musth on average around 28, 29 years old and their firrst musth periods only last a day or two." "With time, they last longer and longer, and by the time they're in their mid to late forties, they stay in musth for three or four months at a time." "How do you study six tons of intoxicated male?" "It takes art as well as science." "They're predictably aggressive when they're in musth, and even though you feel you know an animal a 100 percent... when they're towering over the car and starting to put their tusk on thebonnet," "you don't feel quite so sure of yourself." "But over time, the musth males accepted her, and Joyce came to feel at ease with them." "His name is Beach Ball because everything about him is round, his ears are round, his head is round, his tusks are round, his body is round and his penis is round." "Beach ball, you be nice, you be nice." "I hear you've been misbehaving out at headquarters- knocking down fences and gates." "You be careful with my car." "I've just fiixed it." "Each of the males used to have a sort of a ritualized way of greeting me." "Um, Agamemon used to come and put his tusks up against the windshield, and then throw his head back and forth over the top of the car with his front legs up against the bumper." "And Alfred always, you know, put his trunk on the bonnet." "And this one, I mean, he just, you know, he likes to sort of press up against the side of the car." "He's very sensual." "The old stories of aggressive behavior by "rouge" elephants suddenly made sense." "Males in musth can be hostile, but mainly to each other." "These firghts captured by Joyce in videotape could end injury or even death." "Who wins?" "Size is no longer decisive." "The male who is closer to the pea of musth has the advantage." "What they are firghting for is the right to mate with a female at the height of her cycle." "The dominant male stays close to the female." "Hormones in her urine tell him whether she's ready." "When the time is right, they mate frequently, while her family surrounds them." "Joyce was intrigued not just by what she saw, but by what she heard." "She dubbed it " the mating pandemonium,"" "a sound heard at no other time." "Joyce's discoveries about musth made it possible, for the firrst time, to understand the complexities of elephant mating behavior." "But now the focus of her research was shifting." "Joyce was about to unlock the secret language of the elephants." "The language of elephants was a complete enigma." "Sometimes elephants are incredibly vocal." "Other times they seem to communicate in silence-freezing as if on command" "or suddenly racing off together with no apparent cue." "Even a charging musth male barely made a sound." "I kept hearing a sound like, you know, if you take a thick piece of cardboard and you go" ""whop, whop, whop" with it;" "and they were flapping their ears in a certain way, so I thought the sound was the ear flapping and it was a threat to me." "And then I realized afterwards that, in fact, it was vocalization that was being made and the ear flapping was just in association with it." "In the mid1980s," "Joyce collaborated with Katherine Payne, and expert on whale songs." "Together they were determined to uncover the secrets of elephant communication." "We began making take recordings of the elephants." "It turned out that we were only hearing part of what they said." "The rest was at a frequency too low for us to hear." "Sonograms revealed that humans miss two-thirds of elephant conversation like whales, elephants were using a language that was mostly below the range of human hearing." "Joyce slowly learned to decipher the sounds she could hear." "She came to understand 33 different vocalizations- calls that meant, "lets go," or "attack"" "or baby saying, "help, I'm scared."" "Females comforted their young with rumbles that were as specifirc as saying, "It's okay, we're here."" "It was a radically new way to think about elephants." "What people used to believe was just stomach rumbling was actually a complex language." "These were intelligent creatures." "Now that she knew what the elephants were saying," "Joyce knew when to be afraid, and when it was just play..." "even when to talk back." "Anyone who's watched elephants would say, you know, what is it that makes elephants so much?"" "Why do you like elephants so much?"" "They're so funny." "Why are they funny?" "Well, they're not just funny to look at, they're funny acting, they're clowns; not all of them," "I mean, they've got different personalities, but some are real clowns." "Joyce believed that elephants had emotions- a whole range of feelings- from joy to grief." "She was moved to witness one family come across the bones of their own matriarch." "And it was very different from the way elephants usually approach bones." "They gathered around her bones in a defensive circle facing outwards and gave a very loud rumble that went on and on, and they really were standing over them as if it was a member of their family." "And this whole-just turning the bones over, ever so slowly and gently and, you know, feeling every little crevice," "paying particular attention to the jaw and the skull, and then, you know, backing around and touching with the hind feet." "Joyce witnessed the death of many elephants, but the loss of one of her favorites was especially painful." "It was the elderly matriarch Jezebel." "By the time Joyce arrived," "Jezebel's tusks had been stolen and the corpse had been mutilated." "Feet have been taken!" "She had been ill for a number of weeks and I think when she fell, she was tracked and her tusks were taken." "The 1980s were ominous times for elephants." "Amboseli had always been a sanctuary for them but throughout the rest of Africa, elephants were being slaughtered for their ivory." "I just found it devastating that the more I was learning about these incredible animals, the faster they were being slaughtered." "I just found that I had to try and get out there and do something about it." "The world was at war with elephants." "For Joyce Poole, it was time to join the battle to save them." "In the late 1980s, poachers were killing thousands of elephants to meet the demand for ivory trinkets." "They targeted the males for heavier tusks and hacked the ivories from their faces with machetes." "When the Amboseli elephants project started, there were 167,000 elephants in Kenya," "now there were just 25,000." "In the vast area where the elephants once roamed, all that remained were gleaming white skulls of the dead." "The social structure of the elephants was on the brink of collapse." "Almost all the breeding males were gone, and many families unit consisted entirely of orphans." "If the killing continued, experts predicted," "Kenya's elephants would go instinct." "To save the country's wild life, the government turned to Richard Leakey, a third-generation Kenyan who was already famous as paleontologist." "I am going to do my level best to eliminate the elephant poachers..." "In 1989, Leakey took over Kenya's Wildlife Service and immediately declare war on the poachers." "He got off to a bold and controversial start." "...and it would be my hope that in the coming weeks the press will not ask for permission to fiilm dead elephants, but will have an opportunities to fiilm dead poachers." "Leakey turned Kenya's Wildlife rangers into a crack antipoachering army." "Now when poachers firre on them, they have orders to shoot back." "The firrst year the rangers killed 50 poachers they unearthed huge caches of ivory from butchered elephants." "Then Kenya did something that shocked the world." "At Leakey's urging President Daniel Arap Moi burned three million dollars worth of ivory." "It was Leakey's way to wake up the world to the horror of poaching." "It was a very emotional moment watching the tusks of 1800 elephants to go up in flames and smoke." "But at the same time, I felt a great sense of relief because I believed that the elephants were going to have a reprieve." "A few months later, the nations of the world banned all trade in Ivory with dramatic results." "The next year, instead of losing 3,000 elephants to poachers," "Kenya lost fewer than 50." "But like any war ravaged society, the elephants would need decades to recover." "They weren't going to get that time." "In the very years that elephant population was being decimated," "Kenya's human population had doubled." "People and elephants were both hungry for the same land." "The deal with the inevitably conflict," "Richard Leakey needed someone who understood elephants." "He asked Joyce Poole to run the National elephant program." "It would mean leaving the idyllic world of Amboseli." "It was diffircult to leave Amboseli behind, but at the same time," "I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime." "I had been so privileged to spend so many years with elephants, to have learned so much I felt a sense of, almost of obligation, of giving them something in return and I felt that with the knowledge I had" "that perhaps I could make a difference." "Joyce was convinced she could help the elephants fiind a place in modern Kenya." "She didn't realize how diffircult it was going to be." "Joyce Poole had now entered the very heart of the conflict over elephants." "At Kenya's wildlife service, she recruited a team of committed young Kenyans." "They were eager to develop new programs that would help people and elephants live together." "One of the firrst tasks that I had at Kenya wildlife service was to survey the country and fiind out how many elephants we had left." "I would have loved for them to have been able to return to their old haunts, but there just wasn't the space anymore." "I began to have this horrible vision of a future world where almost all of the land would be taken up by people and the only space left for elephants would be inside a few national parks." "Other African nations had already confiined their elephants to national parks." "Joyce hoped that would never happen in Kenya." "She knew it would ultimately mean controlling the elephant population." "Elephants need space." "An adult eats 300 pounds of vegetation a day." "As the population grows, elephants can have a devastating effect on park habitat." "For other African nations, the solution is to compute how many elephants the land can sustain, and kill the rest." "It's called culling." "I think culling is totally unethical." "I think it's barbaric." "I suppose I imagine it like taking a group of humans and just deciding we're going to take out this family or we're going to take out that family." "Joyce believed she could avoid culling in Kenya." "But now there was a new problem." "Elephants were beginning g to move out of the parks." "And when they did, tragedy was waiting." "The elephants could no longer go back to their old migratory routes." "Settlers had planted crops everywhere." "Families had staked their entire lives on what had once been prime elephant habitat." "The elephants were just going back to their old haunts, but from the settlers' viewpoint, they were out of control." "The radio messages came in from the stations, almost every day." "Elephants were on the rampage." "They were eating their way through cornfirelds, they were knocking down houses, and they were trampling people to death." "Joyce knew she had to keep people and elephants apart, and it was a matter of life and death on both sides." "She tried to protect vulnerable farms with electric fences." "But the elephants learned to short circuit the fences." "Elephants broke through here last night, and they went out into the shambas out here." "Probably, one of the bulls was in charge of this and he must've broke in and they went out." "Every day we have to keep repairing after every breakage and this is taking up resources." "The elephants were always one step ahead." "Under cover of dark, they constantly found new ways to get through to the farms." "In one night, an elephant could destroy a family's entire food supply for the year." "If you can imagine having to defend your entire livelihood from some enormous beast that came in the middle of the night and weighed close to a hundred times what you weigh." "You can't see it." "All you have is a small torch and this- this beast- this monster can track you down, can smell exactly where you are and you can't see it." "It can crush you in a matter of seconds." "That's what so many people across Africa are up against." "When the elephants come, the farmers have only rocks, sticks, and the sound of their own voices to defend their crops." "In the morning, at least one family faces famine." "As you can see for yourself, I have nothing left for my family." "All the crops were destroyed by the elephants;" "the beans, the corn, the tomatoes, everything's gone." "The children will sit and keep quite." "They have nothing to eat." "They'll just sit quietly." "The close contact between people and elephants sometimes ended horribly." "Many people are killed in Kenya every year by elephants." "It's somewhere, probably between 40 and 50 people a year." "Some areas are worse than others." "I don't think that in most cases." "I think that the elephant didn't intend to kill the person." "But in some cases, they've defimitely gone out, tracked down the person and kneeled on them, which is usually the way an elephant would kill someone." "The most effective way to control problem elephants was to shoot them, but local wildlife wardens lacked the equipment and training to do it properly." "Many of the elephants that were being shot were the wrong ones, that it wasn't the elephant that had killed Mrs. So-and-so, that it wasn't the elephant that had gone into the shamba and destroyed it." "The elephants that were being shot were taking hours to die- it just wasn't right." "Joyce had to face a painful reality." "She'd come of age learning how elephants live, and she accepted the need for some to die." "But now she was going to have to give the order." "I realized that elephants were going to have to be shot, that we couldn't allow elephants to go rampaging through people's farms and killing people." "But if we had to kill elephants," "I wanted to make sure that we at least- we killed the right elephants- the ones that were doing the damage." "In 1992, Joyce established a special team and sent them into military training to become marksman." "Their job was to kill problem elephants-but to do it humanely." "I think the question isn't how we can justify shooting elephants." "I think the question is how can we justify not shooting them." "I mean, when you've spent the night out in a maize fireld with people who are just having their whole livelihood destroyed right there and then, there is no other alternative." "Now when villages suffered repeated attacks, Joyce sent her control team." "They watched by night till the elephants came." "We're going to wait for the elephants." "They'll be coming in, probably, in an hour or two." "We'll wait for them here." "As soon as we hear them cutting into the maize, we'll cut into the maize above them and come around, and try and get in front of them." "So if we can get them coming towards us, we can then pick out the ringleader and we'll shoot him." "We've got to shoot one out of the herd to stop them from doing this." "There's no other way we can stop them." "I'm so happy now that this animal is dead." "I've been up every night, waiting and looking after my crops." "The elephants have been bothering us for the last firve years and destroying our crops." "Some of the farmers actually have not harvested anything from their firelds." "For now, this village's cornfirelds were safe." "The killing of one elephant should keep the other away." "Tonight the crops would not have to be guarded but what about all the other villages." "In 1993 alone I gave the order to shot 57 problem elephants and each decision was diffircult, but I knew it was the right thing to do." "For these villagers, the monster that once terrorized them was now just thousands of pounds of meat in the morning sun." "Today, it would fed their families." "All over Kenya, deadly encounters between people and elephants were on the rise." "Joyce Poole and Richard Leakey were under constant pressure to kill more elephants." "I realized my worst fears were probably going to come true someday." "Kenya was going to have to eliminate most of the elephants outside the parks." "We would have to confiine the rest behind fences as other African nations had done." "If elephants had to be confiined to parks," "Joyce wanted to fiind a humane way to control their numbers." "She had her team had a daring new idea." "They were going to test a form of elephant birth control." "Make sure you don't let them go back across the river." "Critics ridiculed the whole pain." "But Leakey gave her the go ahead." "For the test, Joyce relies on exactly the sort of detailed knowledge of individual elephants that has always been her specialty." "Just bring 'em over here." "They are looking for a female who already has a baby, so they can be certain she is not pregnant." "The marksman brings her down with a tranquilizer dart." "Once again, Joyce is defying the experts." "But this might be a way for elephants to survive in the crowded world of modern Africa." "Once the elephant is down," "Joyce and her team have only 20 minutes to do their work." "They inject the elephant with an experimental contraceptive vaccine which should sterilize her." "Then they strap on a radio collar to track her progress." "Joyce believes birth control for elephants may mean hope for the future." "But it will take years to prove that the contraceptive works." "Then just when they begin to get the firrst positive results, it's all over." "Political infirghting puts an end to their plans." "I have given the best years of my life to public service." "In march, 1994 his enemies forced Richard Leakey out of offirce." "...and the stress and the pain of being vilifired by senior politicians and others is more than I think is good for my health." "Under these circumstances I have today sent a letter to his excellency the president offering my resignation." "Joyce and several of her colleagues resigned the same day in support." "What was so devastating about it was that KWS had had such successes, and my own program... we had built up such an extraordinary team and we had really done so much and I feel that people knew that," "people were on our side;" "yes, they wanted us to do more, but they realized we were doing the best we could and all of a sudden, Richard is force to resign... and everything is just left in limbo." "Joyce didn't know yet where her life was going to take her." "But elephants still had a hold on her spirit." "She went back to visit Amboseli." "She now had a daughter named Selengei." "Joyce wanted to introduce her child to her old friends." "We'd gone out one evening to watch elephants." "And I saw Vee approaching us with her family." "And then an extraordinary thing happened." "It wasn't just any rumble, it was greeting rumble." "And who knows what was going on in the elephants heads?" "I could only guess that they had remembered me and they were welcoming us back to Amboseli." "For a few days, Joyce blended in with the familiar camp routine." "Her old colleagues were still pursuing their research." "Elephants would always be part of Joyce's life." "But back in Nairobi, someone else was going to have to make the hard choice about their future." "I think in the long term, let's say looking 50 years ahead, that elephants and people will not be able to coexist, that elephants will be confiined to national parks, many of them with barriers around them." "And I think between here and now, it's going to be a very painful process to get where we're going... and that there'll be a lot of suffering on both sides." "To save what she loved most in the wild, she had fenced it in, controlled it, even killed it- and it hadn't been enough." "I think that the dreams I had or even have for elephants can never be." "There's not enough space anymore." "And what space there is put aside for people." "I think all we can do is look at each situation and do our best to protect what can be protected," "look for solutions for the conflict." "And where we can't do anything, we just let it go." "It can't all be saved." "It can't."