Ernest Shackleton - World War I

World War I

When Shackleton returned to England in May 1917 Europe was in the midst of World War I. Suffering from a heart condition, made worse by the fatigue of his arduous journeys, and too old to be conscripted, he nevertheless volunteered for the army. Repeatedly requesting posting to the front in France he was by now drinking heavily. In October 1917 he was sent to Buenos Aires to boost British propaganda in South America. Unqualified as a diplomat, he was unsuccessful in persuading Argentina and Chile to enter the war on the Allied side. He returned home in April 1918.

Shackleton was then briefly involved in a mission to Spitzbergen to establish a British presence there under guise of a mining operation. On the way he was taken ill in Tromsø, possibly with a heart attack. Appointment to a military expedition to Murmansk obliged him to return home before departing for northern Russia. Four months after the 11 November 1918 Armistice was signed he was back in England, full of plans for the economic development of Northern Russia. In the midst of seeking capital these foundered when the region fell to Bolshevik control. Shackleton returned to the lecture circuit and published his own account of the Endurance expedition, South, in December 1919. For his war effort in North Russia, Shackleton was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).