Our latest feature exhibition From Front Lines to Finish Lines explores the links between soldiers of the Royal Logistic Corps and its predecessors, and the Olympic Games – including the Winter Olympics.

Featured in the exhibition is George Ingle Finch, a British Australian chemist and mountaineer who served in the Army Ordnance Corps and whose achievements in alpinism were honoured at the 1924 Chamonix Winter Olympics.

Finch pictured in uniform

Finch grew up in Australia where he discovered his love of climbing, often scaling Mount Canobolas but the family later moved to Europe where George spent his weekends climbing well known mountains like the Matterhorn, trying out new techniques including the use of oxygen tanks at high altitude.

George moved to England in 1913 and on the outbreak of the First World War he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. Initially tasked as a riding instructor at Woolwich and then Portsmouth, he was then posted to the Middle East in December 1915 and shortly afterwards transferred to the Army Ordnance Department in the Balkans. Here he used his training as a chemist at the Base Ordnance Depot in Salonika to salvage damaged ammunition and develop explosives.

It was at this time that the German fighter ace Rudolf Von Eschwege, nicknamed ‘Richthofen of the Balkans,’ was causing chaos for the Royal Flying Corps. On the 21st November 1917, an observation balloon was raised to an altitude of 3200 feet ensuring it was seen by the Germans who dispatched Von Eschwege to attack. However, George had rigged the balloon with 250kgs of explosives and a concealed detonator which he swiftly triggered on the German’s approach, causing Von Eschwege to crash fatally. For his heroics in downing the German fighter ace, George Ingle Finch he was awarded an MBE.

He was demobilised in May 1919 as a Captain and soon turned his attention back to mountaineering, science and inventing. He was invited to be a part of the 1922 British expedition to climb Mount Everest to oversee the bottled oxygen system that he devised. Along with his climbing partner Geoffrey Bruce, he achieved a new height record of 8321 metres (27,300 feet), the highest point ever reached on Mount Everest. Despite failing to summit George returned to Britain as a national hero alongside George Mallory, who would return to Everest in 1924 and perish in his attempt to reach the summit.

For their achievement on Everest, all members of the 1922 expedition where awarded the gold medal for alpinism at the 1924 Chamonix Winter Olympic Games closing ceremony by Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic Games. Medals for alpinism were awarded for the greatest achievement that had taken place in the four-year period between Games but the format was short lived, only being contested in 1924, 1932 and 1936.

George retired from climbing in 1931 and went on to become a professor of applied physical chemistry at Imperial College London in 1936 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1938. He died aged eighty-two on the 22nd November 1970.