AN Army museum was delighted when retired mountaineer Major Michael Lane agreed to provide a souvenir for a new exhibition.

It expected to get a glove or a woolly hat from Major Lane, 55, who is now expedition leader for North-East explorer Robert Swan's Mission: Antarctica.

But to the amazement of staff at the National Army Museum in Chelsea, London, he presented them with the carefully-preserved fingers and toes he lost to frostbite during an Everest expedition.

Following an epic climb, in 1976, Major Lane, known as "Bronco", lost all ten toes and the tips of the fingers on his right hand.

During the three month expedition, he bivouacked at 28,000ft - generally considered too high to do so - and had to remove a glove to open an oxygen bottle, leading to the loss of the fingers.

The museum asked the major, from Hereford, for something to put in the Army 2000 exhibition, which looks at the modern force.

"I said, 'Well, I have got access to my fingers and toes that were taken off 24 years ago. They are mounted as wall exhibits - do you want them?'" he said.

Major Lane, from Hereford, also donated an ice axe.

Museum spokesman Julian Humphrys said: "It is an unusual gift, and not quite what we were expecting.

"But the museum aims to tell the story of the ordinary soldier past and present and what he or she has been through, so values objects that have a story behind them."

Now helping Mr Swan's project, Major Lane takes young people from across the world to explore the Antarctica, centred on a Russian scientific base, Bellingshausen.