John Fraser Noel
Born in 1941 in Whitchurch, Cardiff, he joined our Group in the 1950s and progressed to be a Rover Scout while residing with his parents, Vivian and Marie Noel, in Coed Glas Road.
In 1962 he was given the Gilt Cross, the Scouts’ highest award for bravery, after rescuing a boy on Ben Nevis mountain in Scotland. John was on a camping expedition in the summer of 1961 with some other members of our Scout Group when they encountered a man whose son had fallen down a crevasse. While the other scouts made a stretcher and boiled up some soup, John Noel climbed down 50 feet into the crevasse to reach the boy who was lying in great pain among snow-covered boulders. John subsequently enabled a successful rescue and was rightly hailed as a hero.
John was a very active member of the Scout Group and travelled to Melbourne, Australia, later in 1961 to attend the World Rover Scout Moot (a bit like the World Scout Jamboree). He made lots of friends world-wide and, being an amateur radio enthusiast, he participated in the annual “Jamboree on the Air (JOTA)” where scouts around the world contact each other on short wave radio (this event still takes place and is accompanied by an internet equivalent).
John’s technical and scouting skills, including his experience of mountaineering and caving, helped him gain a role in 1964 as a Radio Officer with the prestigious British Antarctic Survey team. He was based at Stonington Island near the Palmer Peninsula in Antarctica. On the morning of 24 May 1966 John and a colleague, Thomas Allan (aged 26) from Scotland, were due some time off and so decided to take a ten-day sledging trip with two dog teams. Twenty-four hours later they radioed back to base to say they were still moving but that the weather was deteriorating, with strong winds and driving snow. However, nothing was heard from the two men for the next few days and so, after several days of fine weather, a team from the base set out to search for John and his companion. After following their route, a sad sight beheld them. The two young men were lying frozen in the snow, having perished a few days earlier. They were brought back to the base and were buried on a rocky point of Stonington Island, beneath two great piles of stones and commemorative crosses. Two mountains near the area where they died are named in their memory: Mount Noel and Mount Allan.
Back in Llanishen, a memorial service was held at the parish church on 20 June 1966. The service ended appropriately with the hymn “Who Would True Valour See”. The attendees included John Noel’s fiancee, Miss Penelope Jenkins, also of Llanishen and aged 23 at the time. They were due to get married after John’s intended return to Cardiff in October that year. It is also understood that John had a younger brother, George, and an older sister Katrina.
A memorial to John Fraser Noel was also placed at the Dolygaer Adventure Centre, near Merthyr. It is a stone tablet placed alongside the Brecon Mountain Railway next to the Centre, which was originally owned by Llanishen and Lisvane Scout Group. We have camped there many times over the years. Subsequently our meeting and storage building was named “Fraser Hall”, after his middle name. (Fraser was his maternal grandmother’s maiden name.)
In autumn 2016, a scouting friend of John Noel called John Richards, who now lives in Australia, visited Dolygaer to pay his respects and also present the centre with a plaque containing newspaper articles and medal details about John Noel. He has kindly provided our Scout Group with copies of those articles and they are now on display in the entrance way of the main Scout Hall.
An inquest into the deaths of the two young men was overseen by Sir Vivian Fuchs, Chief of the British Antarctic Survey. His report indicated that they had been extremely brave and had done everything by the book. They had dug a cave into ice to shelter themselves and store their kit and food. They had correctly kept the dogs outside and so had to tend to them regularly in the blizzard, to dig them out of the snow. It appeared that during one such visit to the dogs, Tom Allan did not return promptly. Correctly, John did not go to look for him and stayed in his position. If Tom was lost, his only hope was for John to remain at the entrance to their shelter, shouting and shouting in an effort to guide him back safely. He kept calling until he could call no more and must have fallen asleep with exhaustion. He was found frozen, waist deep in snow, still standing at the mouth of the cave. If he had left his post, the entrance to their cave would have immediately filled up. He could have saved himself, but he gave his life for his friend.
Article in Wales Online in June 2017:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/heartbroken-mums-letter-been-found-13152805
Burial place of John Noel and Tom Allan , Stonington Island, Antarctica:
