Before I close this story of Advance Base, I must mention one more thing I learned as a result of what happened to me there. Eager as I was to step directly into the responsibilities of leadership on my return to Little America, I was not long in discovering that a few were beyond me. The medico said that if I flew I should have only myself to blame for the consequences. While I did, in fact, command the first important flight into the unknown — and these flights have been my biggest interest — and another one later on, I had to be satisfied to stay on the ground after that and turn the tricky navigation of the big Condor over to Ken Rawson. Rawson was then only twenty-three years old and, if I remember correctly, had been in the air but once or twice in his life. He performed his job to perfection. No better compliment is possible than the simple statement that the two hard-boiled veteran Navy pilots who sat forward of him never questioned his reckoning. So I say in conclusion: A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable.
END