Disappointment dogged their every step
on the trip back from the Pole.
Amundsen had bested Scott,
as the World would soon be told.

Evans was the first to die,
to perish in the frost.
Oates, the poor old soldier,
was next to pay the cost.

Crippled by an old war wound,
Home base too far to go,
He walked out in a blizzard
and was buried by the snow.

Eleven miles to fuel and food
The three men left were stranded
A fierce winter storm held them at bay
Empty bellied, empty handed.

Bowers first, then Wilson died,
felled by dysentery .
Scott, their brave Commander,
then wrote his final entry:

“A pity, I can write no more,
too weak to venture out.
Nearly snow blind from the Frost,
by Winter put to rout”

Eight months later, a rescue party
came upon their sad remains
Robert Falcon Scott had died.
The world would learn their names.

They raised a cairn of ice around
the place where brave men died.
A crudely fashioned wooden cross
they placed above on high.