W. R. B. Battle (1919-1953)

Abstract

On 13 July 1953 Ben Battle was accidentally drowned in Baffin Island while returning from a lone walk near the Base Camp of the Arctic Institute's 1953 expedition. Walter Ravenhill Brown Battle was born on 23 December 1919 in Leeds, England, and educated at Leeds Grammar School, and at the University of Leeds, graduating in geography in 1949. Having registered as a conscientious objector he spent most of the duration of the war working on English farms. Ben was early interested in mountains and in climbing, and with this background it was natural that he should become a keen glaciologist. In 1948 and 1949 he went to east Greenland with the Danish Pearyland expeditions. Then from 1949 to 1953 he carried out research for a doctoral degree of the University of Cambridge, on the formation of corries. He tested the validity of the hypothesis that freeze thaw action within a bergschrund results in corrie erosion by gradual shattering of the rock wall. During this time he took temperature recordings in bergschrunds in Norway and Switzerland, and made laboratory experiments, beam-testing rocks which had been exposed to alternate freezing and thawing. In 1952 he was awarded the Senior McGill University-Arctic Institute Carnegie Fellowship, and he and his wife, Barbara, went to live in Montreal. He continued his studies on the Institute's 1953 Baffin Island expedition. His results indicate that it is unlikely that freeze-thaw action in bergschrunds can cause corrie formation. A number of his glaciological papers have been published in scientific journals. He firmly believed in the application of more experimental and quantitative research in geomorphology. Ben was in many ways a man of unusual and firm ideals, many of them at variance with contemporary society, but springing from his deep humanism. Ever cheery and open hearted, he delighted in his fellow men, and so got on famously with them. To have him as a companion, in city life, in winter skiing, and on the Baffin expedition was a constant pleasure. For the writer it will always be a joy to relive these memories again.