SIX CAME BACK

This is the edited diary of Sergeant Brainard recounting three years (1881-1884) of the Greely Expedition for meteorological observation. And in the reading it is a human account of hardships, relieved by some little humor and personal detail, a worthy account of courage and perseverance in arctic adventure. Twenty-six set out on this expedition but only six returned with the third relief ship, since the first two ships were held up in the ice. The comparatively easy times of the first year, the disciplining of the party, the growing scourge of inactivity, of cold, and the retreat at the end of the third year which was to result in doom. Told with no dramatic flourishes, and no sentimentality, it is thereby a more impressive account.