Royal Dragoon Guards return to honour hero

Soldiers from the Royal Dragoon Guards are returning to Enniskillen on Saturday for the opening of an exhibition on the centenary of Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition and the death in Antarctica of Captain Lawrence Oates of the 6th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards.

The soldiers, most of them from Northern Ireland, broke their schedule in order to attend the opening at the Fermanagh County museum and brought with them some important regimental momentos of Captain Oates – one of their most distinguished “sons”.

Captain Scott, Captain Oates and 14 other members of the Terra Nova Expedition set off from their Cape Evans base camp for the South Pole on  November 1 1911. On January 18 1912, 79 days after starting their journey, they finally reached the Pole only to discover that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his four-man team had reached the South Pole on  December 14 1911, beating Scott’s party by 35 days.