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Wilfrid Noyce
Cuthbert Wilfrid Francis Noyce (31 December 1917 – 24 July 1962) (usually known as Wilfrid Noyce (often misspelt as 'Wilfred'), some sources give third forename as Frank) was an English mountaineer and author. He was a member of the 1953 British Expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Everest.
Noyce was born in 1917 in Simla, the British hill station in India. The eldest son of Sir Frank Noyce of the Indian Civil Service and his wife, Enid Isabel, a daughter of W. M. Kirkus of Liverpool, Noyce was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead and then Charterhouse, where he became head boy, and King's College, Cambridge, taking a first in Modern Languages. In the Second World War he was initially a conscientious objector, joining the Friends Ambulance Unit.
However, he later chose to serve as a private in the Welsh Guards, before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps on 19 July 1941. He later attained the rank of captain in the Intelligence Corps. In February 1942 he joined the first course at the secret Bedford Japanese School run by Captain Oswald Tuck RN and after completing the course he was sent to the Military Wing at the Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park. He was then sent to India where he was employed as a code-breaker at the Wireless Experimental Centre, Delhi. With Maurice Allen in spring 1943 they broke the Water Transport Code, an important Japanese Army code and the first high-level army code broken. John Hunt wrote that "...during a part of the war [Noyce] was employed in training air crews [in mountain techniques] in Kashmir. For a brief period he assisted me in running a similar course for soldiers".
After the war, Noyce became a schoolmaster. From 1946 until 1950 he taught modern languages at Malvern College. Then, following in the footsteps of George Mallory, he returned as a master to his own old school, Charterhouse, where he remained for ten years. On 12 August 1950, between Malvern and Charterhouse, he married Rosemary Campbell Davies, and they had two sons, Michael and Jeremy.
Colin Kirkus was Noyce's cousin, seven years older than Noyce. Kirkus developed an active interest in climbing during his early teens, the families of Kirkus and Noyce shared holidays in the Welsh hills. and it was Kirkus who first introduced Noyce to rock climbing.
By the age of eighteen, Noyce was already a fine climber, from 1935 regularly climbing with John Menlove Edwards of Liverpool. Before the Second World War, he helped Edwards to produce rock climbing guides to the crags of Tryfan and Lliwedd in Snowdonia. Like other leading British climbers of the prewar period, such as Mallory, Jack Longland, Ivan Waller and A. B. Hargreaves, Noyce became a protégé of Geoffrey Winthrop Young, attending his parties at Pen-y-Pass.
In the late 1930s, Noyce was one of a small band of Britons climbing at a high standard in the Alps. He was well known for his speed and stamina, and in two early alpine seasons, 1937 and 1938, climbing with Armand Charlet or Hans Brantschen as his guide, he made major climbs in very fast times. In 1942, in North Wales, he achieved a non-stop solo climb of 1,370 metres. During this period Noyce wrote that he suffered three serious accidents:
The first was a fall of 200 feet with a damp ledge that came away on the Mickledore Grooves of Scafell in 1937, when I was nineteen years old. The last, in 1946, found me blown bodily by a gust off an easy rib of Great Gable, onto my leg, which crumpled and broke under me [...] When I returned to the Alps and fells, it was often to introduce boys or to explore new corners. Though I still climbed rock, I preferred to be led at 'Very Severe' standard.
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Wilfrid Noyce
Cuthbert Wilfrid Francis Noyce (31 December 1917 – 24 July 1962) (usually known as Wilfrid Noyce (often misspelt as 'Wilfred'), some sources give third forename as Frank) was an English mountaineer and author. He was a member of the 1953 British Expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Everest.
Noyce was born in 1917 in Simla, the British hill station in India. The eldest son of Sir Frank Noyce of the Indian Civil Service and his wife, Enid Isabel, a daughter of W. M. Kirkus of Liverpool, Noyce was educated at St Edmund's School, Hindhead and then Charterhouse, where he became head boy, and King's College, Cambridge, taking a first in Modern Languages. In the Second World War he was initially a conscientious objector, joining the Friends Ambulance Unit.
However, he later chose to serve as a private in the Welsh Guards, before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps on 19 July 1941. He later attained the rank of captain in the Intelligence Corps. In February 1942 he joined the first course at the secret Bedford Japanese School run by Captain Oswald Tuck RN and after completing the course he was sent to the Military Wing at the Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park. He was then sent to India where he was employed as a code-breaker at the Wireless Experimental Centre, Delhi. With Maurice Allen in spring 1943 they broke the Water Transport Code, an important Japanese Army code and the first high-level army code broken. John Hunt wrote that "...during a part of the war [Noyce] was employed in training air crews [in mountain techniques] in Kashmir. For a brief period he assisted me in running a similar course for soldiers".
After the war, Noyce became a schoolmaster. From 1946 until 1950 he taught modern languages at Malvern College. Then, following in the footsteps of George Mallory, he returned as a master to his own old school, Charterhouse, where he remained for ten years. On 12 August 1950, between Malvern and Charterhouse, he married Rosemary Campbell Davies, and they had two sons, Michael and Jeremy.
Colin Kirkus was Noyce's cousin, seven years older than Noyce. Kirkus developed an active interest in climbing during his early teens, the families of Kirkus and Noyce shared holidays in the Welsh hills. and it was Kirkus who first introduced Noyce to rock climbing.
By the age of eighteen, Noyce was already a fine climber, from 1935 regularly climbing with John Menlove Edwards of Liverpool. Before the Second World War, he helped Edwards to produce rock climbing guides to the crags of Tryfan and Lliwedd in Snowdonia. Like other leading British climbers of the prewar period, such as Mallory, Jack Longland, Ivan Waller and A. B. Hargreaves, Noyce became a protégé of Geoffrey Winthrop Young, attending his parties at Pen-y-Pass.
In the late 1930s, Noyce was one of a small band of Britons climbing at a high standard in the Alps. He was well known for his speed and stamina, and in two early alpine seasons, 1937 and 1938, climbing with Armand Charlet or Hans Brantschen as his guide, he made major climbs in very fast times. In 1942, in North Wales, he achieved a non-stop solo climb of 1,370 metres. During this period Noyce wrote that he suffered three serious accidents:
The first was a fall of 200 feet with a damp ledge that came away on the Mickledore Grooves of Scafell in 1937, when I was nineteen years old. The last, in 1946, found me blown bodily by a gust off an easy rib of Great Gable, onto my leg, which crumpled and broke under me [...] When I returned to the Alps and fells, it was often to introduce boys or to explore new corners. Though I still climbed rock, I preferred to be led at 'Very Severe' standard.