The primary thesis - perhaps overstated - of Wade Davis's book - is that it was more or less the demons/memory of the Great War that drove them. having not read

The primary thesis - perhaps overstated - of Wade Davis's book - is that it was more or less the demons/memory of the Great War that drove them. having not read Conefry's book yet - it's only been published for less than a month, I don't know if this is Mick's thesis or your thesis. All that said, Davis's book is held in high regard by the mountaineering and the historians of the period.