Munsay David Thomas Foster

(Bearbeiten)

Biografie:
David Thomas Foster Munsey MA, FRICS
David Munsey was educated at Gresham's School, Holt and at St.John's College, Cambridge. He had a number of holidays with the CUMC in Scotland and Wales during the 30s and in 1938 and 1939, while on leave from the Sudan, he climbed in the Valais with Dr A. R. Wilson and, occasionally, with guides. He served in the Sudan's Survey Department from 1935 till 1958 and then, after retiring, he became lecturer in surveying at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham. Here, to quote another obituary notice, “he was well liked by his young pupils who could always hear him and who appreciated his humorous treatment of the inattentive”.
Two impressions of David Munsey stand sharply in my mind-one of his professional perfectionism, the other of an occasional exuberant romanticism. He once invited me to bring some students to visit his survey team in the desert, near the Sixth Cataract, where a first order base line was being laid out. This was at a time when the Sudan's main triangulation was being linked to the great 30th Meridian Survey-the longest terrestrial geodetic arc, which ran, somewhat circuitously, from the Arctic Ocean to Capetown and had to be completed in the swamps and deserts of the Sudan. The work was done largely at night. Behind elaborate, tentlike wind breaks long invar steel tapes were being compared. Their lengths were checked and rechecked through a microscopic gauge as the night wore on. Within a few years these classical methods would be largely replaced by aerial and satellite techniques. Here we were looking at the high point of a technology which had been born in the Nile Valley at least 6006 years ago. David's team of scurrying, enthusiastic chain men and surveyors worked through the night. Yet how much of the ancient tradition and of abstract but important outcomes were they aware of as they pinned down their millionths of a metre here or fractions of an angular second there? At all events it seemed to matter and to be enjoyed by everyone; like a wedding.
My other picture is of Mount Kenya in 1941. There were 3 of us and we only had soft rubber desert boots and a couple of suk-made ice-axes. We climbed Point Lenana, but the upper cliffs of Nelion were plastered with ice on our side of the mountain and we did not quite make the summit. Food, rope, sleeping bags and information about the climbs were all in short supply and we felt as though the mountain had not been visited for years. David enjoyed it all. He was a strong, competent climber. A little hardship would bring out explosive bursts of laughter and language-mainly old-fashioned 'good' language-chunks of Wordsworth, comments by Sherlock Holmes or the .magic, ringing names of the peaks and lakes around us-Batian, H6hnel, Teleki, which would echo, like alleluyas from the rocks.
After the War David Munsey only did a few Alpine climbs-the Wetterhorn in 1947 and some
ascents in the Mont Blanc and Gran Paradiso ranges in the 50s. As he grew older he would often go on long hill walks with his family or with his friend the vicar of Lechlade. He did much work for the local church. He leaves a widow and two sons. In the Sudan and in many other parts of the world there will be people who remember with deep gratitude a warm-hearted, booming perfectionist.
Robin Hodgkin
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 86, 1981, Seite 268-269