Major Andrew Todd

They say that fortune favours the brave - and the Gurkha motto is, 'better to die than to live a coward'. Lady luck should look particularly kindly upon Gurkha soldiers then, and that certainly seems to have been the case for the group trying to conquer Everest when the Nepal earthquake struck in April 2015.

For had Major Andrew Todd and his team of Gurkha climbers not caught the first lift from Everest base camp up the mountain on April 25th, they would almost certainly have died along with the 19 who lost their lives on the mountain that day. Had an ice fall – the size of two houses – not missed them by inches, they would have perished in an avalanche triggered by the earthquake. And had the soldiers not been on Everest that day, the outcome for 116 of their fellow climbers - whose lives their courageous actions helped to save – may well have been very different.

The climb was meant to be a celebratory event, marking an important milestone in the Gurkhas' history. As Major Todd explains, “A Gurkha had never been on top of the world and that was what we wanted to do: to put the first serving Gurkha on the summit of Everest, in their homeland of Nepal. As 2015 was the 200^th anniversary of Gurkha service in the British Army, it felt like a good way to celebrate that record with a new achievement.”

And so the Gurkha 200 (G200) expedition was born. Major Todd recalls that, “We arrived in Nepal on 1^st April. We spent three weeks at base camp just rehearsing, particularly for the most technical and dangerous parts of the ascent. A Chinese team wedged itself into the camp next to us: tragically, they were all killed by the avalanche. That still upsets me now.”

All climbers are obsessive weather watchers, and when their analysis indicated that the weather window was right for them, they decided to begin their climb. Little did they realise at the time that this was to be a life-saving decision.

“We could see that the jet stream was moving and our team was in really good order so we thought, 'This is our moment'. But we nearly delayed and didn't go that day. If we hadn't moved at the time of the earthquake, we would all have been in our tents. When we went back afterwards, there were rocks the size of fridges on top of our tents; we would have been killed instantly.” Survivors later likened the scene to that of the devastation wrought by a nuclear bomb.

"If we hadn't moved at the time of the earthquake, we would all have been in our tents."

As the Gurkha team began its ascent, the mountain issued its first, chilling warning when a massive ice fall narrowly avoided them. An experienced climber, Major Todd was immediately unsettled. “I knew it wasn't right that the ice fall happened. At that time in the morning, it was still so cold that you wouldn't expect to get those kinds of movements. The blocks of ice were about the size of two houses. I don't know how we weren't underneath it. We were just incredibly lucky, but I also think we were meant to be there to help the other people.”

The team arrived safely at Camp 1, some 6500m above sea level, and, with the summit an achievable 2500m away, still firmly believed that they would succeed in their mission. “We'd had a really good day. We'd cracked the first part of the climb and for the first time we thought, 'We've got this. We all felt so strong and then... chaos.”

It was whilst the team were in their tents at Camp 1 that nature unleashed its deadly force upon Nepal in the form of a powerful earthquake, killing over 8,000 and devastating many of the towns and villages caught in its wake. On Everest, the result was a terrifying ice avalanche.

“The glacier just suddenly fell down and moved sideways while it was still falling. The noise was just incredible. It was a huge explosion, like a bomb in Afghanistan going on and on for about a minute. I put my hand out of my tent and was hit by a blast wave, which was the ice avalanche coming up the mountain from Base Camp, and then I couldn't see anything. There was avalanche debris everywhere. It took us a while to realise that it must have been an earthquake. It was just chaos, I couldn't hear anything on the radio and I tried to ring Kathmandu but the lines were down. We still had some of the team further down the mountain and thought they must be dead. There was no way anyone could survive that.”

A lucky escape

There was relief all round, however, when the other G200 climbers managed to make contact, informing Major Todd that, miraculously, they had all survived, despite ice from the avalanche falling all around them. Despite their ordeal, the soldiers immediately sought to assist with the rescue effort. “We gave them orders to go back down to help with the casualty evacuation, as by this time, we were getting reports of the casualties and deaths,” said Major Todd.

The team's luck did not end there: their Base Camp manager, Captain Buddhi, presumed dead, had also survived. “He dragged a number of the Sherpas to safety behind rocks. It was unbelievably quick thinking. He then got picked up by the avalanche and thrown into a hollow. He had twenty stitches to his head, but he was alive.”

Major Todd and the other G200 soldiers, along with 116 others, were still stranded on the mountain though. The route they had taken to Camp 1 – already a perilous climb - had been destroyed, and they had to endure a terrifying three days at the notoriously dangerous site, facing dwindling fuel supplies and alarming aftershocks from the earthquake, before managing to make their way back down. “No one could get up to us and we couldn't get down. The helicopters were needed further down to deal with real casualties.”

Co-ordinating the rescue

“I just thought, 'Right, we've got a job to do here. We've got to get ourselves and everyone else off this mountain. It was all hands to the pump. As a soldier, you've been trained your whole life to protect your mission and your men first and yourself last. I wasn't thinking about myself, I was only worried about whether the blokes were OK. Being in the Army, your tolerance of fear is much higher and you know your coping strategies for dealing with it. That also helped.”

The Gurkha team was able to draw upon all of its experience to secure the safe evacuation of the climbers trapped on Everest. “We all speak Nepali, so we could communicate with the helicopter pilots, and we had links to the aviation guys in Kathmandu. It was a Gurkha-controlled extraction. I had to take the climbers over the open glacier to the helicopter landing site, and that was terrifying: it was completely broken up with avalanche debris everywhere. Inside, I was thinking 'This is terrible; I don't even know if we're going to get down ' but on the outside, I was saying to them, 'It's going to be fine, don't worry.'

Major Todd is quick to acknowledge that the rescue was, quite literally, a team effort, with all the G200 soldiers playing a part. In a five-hour period, they managed to secure the safe extraction of 116 climbers as well as the Sherpas and their kit (to avoid leaving a detrimental environmental impact). But their efforts did not end there: the team then proceeded to Base Camp to assist with the clear-up, which included the removal of bodies. Despite being the last to leave, the Gurkhas then moved on foot towards rural villages to offer their assistance. Given that three of the team had had their own houses flattened in the earthquake, this was an extraordinary act of altruism on the part of the Nepalese soldiers, earning a number of them Army commendations for bravery.

Outstanding Soldier of the Year

But it was Major Todd's exemplary leadership that caught the attention of Millie awards, following an anonymous nomination for 'Outstanding Soldier of the Year' by a member of the public. Initially reluctant to be singled out for his own actions, Major Todd's climbing team convinced him to accept the nomination.“I felt a bit of a fraud; it was a team effort”, he explains.

Major Todd was able to take some of his team to the ceremony: a star-studded affair with guests including Rod Stewart and Boris Johnson. The Outstanding Soldier award was presented by renowned adventurer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, one of Major Todd's boyhood heroes. Fiennes, dubbed 'the greatest living explorer' by the Guinness Book of Records, was unstinting in his praise for the G200 team, telling Major Todd as he presented him with the award that,“What you and your men did on Mount Everest was incredible and in the great tradition of bravery, gallantry and service.”

Major Todd presented the trophy to the Sergeant's Mess at Shornecliffe, and remains modest about his achievements, admitting that, “The greatest gift we were given was our lives. We got to go back: there were other people who will never have that chance.”

But thanks to the G200 team's courageous efforts, 116 climbers and Sherpas did get to go back. In the words of the Gurkha motto, 'better to die than to live a coward'.