WWI content with a vintage cycling Easter egg
 

Find it!

Hint, reading the full description of the album will help.

Butte de Vauquois, France

This one surprised me as I foolishly thought I was some sort of amateur expert on cycling in WWI, from the loss of the greats like Francois Faber in the trenches to the Brit cycling battalions on their BSAs with mounted Lee-Enfields. I was wrong. I knew nothing.

Well I either laid a lead egg with this thread or no one can figure out how to reference a device that expels a projectile via expanding gasses on this forum without having their post removed.

Just when I thought I might have been within the rules... maybe I needed to post a "trigger warning?"

I see no “laid a lead egg” here. I enjoyed your photo essay. It’s just that laying waste to an entire town and living and fighting underground for weeks on end while turning the surface to mud and rubble and craters is a bit too current. I’m depressed very day by the savagery.

I saw the vintage English bicycle pumps.

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

Well that's a very fair point Prowler . War is the overriding thread of our existence and has and will always be with us. I've spent a good deal of my adult life in conflict zones of one type or another, and even when CNN and Fox can't raise their viewership points people who look and sound less like us are locked in deadly struggles. I study it, I've smelled and lived it, and perhaps I'm too casual referencing it.

I suppose many of us come here exactly to avoid such topics, and for that I apologize I certainly didn't intend to lighten the connection, and I forget that many people aren't as rooted in that world as I may be.
@MoDs: I'll happily let this thread perish as it gradually gets pushed deeper or if in poor taste I have no objection to your deletion of it.

Please don’t feel like you erred, not as far as I’m concerned. I enjoy what you teach us about France. I, too, am a student of history - from ancient times to now. That’s why I recall Peter, Paul and Mary singing “when will they ever learn”.

I guess I’m just a bit sensitive lately because of the troubles. SSDD for thousands and thousands of years. Greed, money and the lust for power. BUT if we don’t remember and read history we’re doomed to repeat it.

Thanks for the “tour”.

And YES, a few hours riding or wrenching bicycles is a big help. One reason I still work at the LBS once a week.

Great photo essay. I can see no reason to delete anything, but far be it from me to understand the mind of the mod. There is a book, and a movie called "Everything Is Illuminated", by Jonathon Safran Foer, which depicts a village wiped from the face of the earth during WWII, in Ukraine, of all places. Some of the shots remind me of some of the shots in the movie. It's a rare case of both the book and the movie being worthwhile.

Unfortunately, we are doomed to repeat it anyway.

Very interesting to see in person or in pictures!

I spent four years in military service, so have some context for relating to those involved in trench warfare. That was a miserable period, with truly enormous amounts of loss and waste of life. Those who survived were left with physical and mental injuries. A tragedy in so many ways.

Certainly, it is good for everyone to know and understand the full price of warfare and the inability to coexist peacefully. That doesn't eliminate the people who ignore those costs in deference to their own desires, hatreds, anger, etc., unfortunately.

Steve in Peoria

regarding the easter egg... I suspect that this text from the album description is the relevant one: "a picture of the pumps used to clear the subterrainean spaces of water."

There is a photo of some lovely brass pumps that do appear to be bike pumps...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/76636917@N00/52054295280

I guess you never know what might end up as a tool of warfare!

Steve in Peoria

I appreciate your post, Mark. It stirs my imagination to plan a cycle tour that includes some of these types of memorials on the western front.

There are many places in Northern France where villages were entirely wiped off the map by artillery, and some were left with remains of buildings. The French chose to leave these remains as reminders of the destruction, where countries like Belgium with much less land available rebuilt immediately after the wars. The French refer to these as "villages detruit" or destroyed villages. The small town that was on the hill of Vauquois was entirely vaporized and thus the only remains were the bits of crockery and household items in the small museum.

There is a village in southern France named Oradour-sur-Glane that is quite well-known. The Nazis committed an atrocity of reprisal there for the death of a German officer that saw the murder of most of the entire town's population, 642 men, women and children. After the war the French left the town exactly as it was found, with buildings, old automobiles and other items standing as witness to what happened there. You may recall it from the opening of the iconic 70's BBC "World at War" series, and it was prominently covered during the TdF in 2017 when it passed nearby.

There's a lot of short videos on youtube about it, and it's one of the more poignant tales of the Western Front of WWII.

Oradour-sur-Glane

The German officer thought most directly responsible was Adolf Diekmann, who died shortly afterwards in combat in Normandy. I've seen his grave at the La Cambe German Cemetery, where a visitor center details the crimes he committed. This atrocity is well documented, and forms much of the French cultural memory of the occupation. A contextual point is valuable though, the Nazi regime pursued such massive reprisals as a routine matter on the Eastern Front. They slaughtered Russians wholesale in numbers so vast as to defy accurate accounting after the war. I only mention this to make the point that Oradour was like the very tip of a massive iceberg of pain and suffering during that time. This doesn't even begin to examine the warfare against civilians perpetrated by the Japanese in China from the 30s, or later by the Allies as we bombed entire cities into rubble. None of that mitigates Diekmann's culpability, or that of his troops who pulled the triggers, but level of atrocity is a hard thing to define in a war of such scale.

Thanks, should you want any assistance planning that I'm happy to help. Much of the region of ideal for cycling, in spite of the tiny roads. The beauty of the countryside, the warmth of the people and the great food are a welcome counterpoint to the sad history of that period. I need to plan a trip to do some riding in that area myself, the combination of rolling hills, sharp (but relatively short) climbs and breathtaking vistas is hard to beat.

@popra - I appreciated your photo essay as well, My parents were/are part of that history with my dad having received a Purple Heart while doing recon in the battle of the bridge at Remagen and having been at Ardennes. My mother was in Berlin before, during and after the war having been one of a very few Germans escaping during the Berlin airlift to the US (my dads doing) after escaping occupying Russian troops. Her brother survived death marches as a POW of the Americans.
War is hell for both sides who execute it. As long as there are those who wish to control others in any form or way and at any level, there will be battles of every kind.

Thanks for that, I'd hoped to strike a chord with a few folks.

I'll bring this back towards cycling with this link:

First post-WWI TdF Podcast

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...12fa42acac.png

Excerpt from the article:
On June 29, 1919, one day after the Treaty of Versailles brought about the end of World War I, nearly seventy cyclists embarked on the thirteenth Tour de France. From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race that would trace the country’s border, through seaside towns and mountains to the ghostly western front. Traversing a cratered postwar landscape, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the psychological scars of war. Most of the athletes had arrived straight from the front, where so many fellow countrymen had suffered or died. Sixty-seven cyclists, some of whom were still on active military duty, started from Paris on June 29, 1919; only 11 finished the monthlong tour. The cyclists’ perseverance and tolerance for pain would be tested in a grueling, monthlong competition.

I just ordered the book, I can't believe I never saw that title.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...35edde8b05.jpg
And this was Francois Faber, the Luxembourger who won the TdF in 1909 and perished in 1915 in the trenches after volunteering to fight for the French country that he loved.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...878fd0b6ec.jpg
This is his commemorative plaque inside the chapel at the huge French cemetery of Notre Dame de Lorette
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0a162b2925.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...ccb2ff02a8.jpg
And his commemorative plaque in the city park of Luxembourg:

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...e53c83a446.jpg
​​​​​​​

There were at least a couple of other Tour de France victors who died in the Great War:

Lucein Petit-Breton won the TdF in 1907 and 1908, enlisted in the French army as a driver, perishing in a behind the lines accident in 1917.

Octave Lapize won the TdF in 1910 and was a three time victor of the Paris-Roubaix classic.. He joined the air arm of the French army and died of fatal wounds, after being shot down in 1917. He has a memorial at the top of the Col du Tourmalet. I am attaching a service photo of him, next to what appears to be a Nieuport 82, and a photo of the remains of the Nieuport XXIV, in which he was shot down.

I'm a bit of an amateur Great War historian myself and being Canadian, I've always wanted to make a pilgrimage to the Vimy Ridge and Beaumont-Hamel memorials.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...0e1e63ef87.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...c944d45fcf.jpg

A suitable companion piece would by Across France in Wartime by Kuklos, aka W. Fitzwater Wray, British cyclist and author. It’s his 1916 account of riding from Brittany to the front line and sending dispatches home to his local newspaper - until French authorities sent him back on a train, declaring cycling prohibited in a war zone. If memory serves he rode a Raleigh X-frame equipped with a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub.

The later book The Kuklos Papers includes a chapter “Into The Light” that is generally viewed as his thoughts on cycling at the end of the war.

Another piece of vintage cycling writing tangentially tied to the Great War is Wayfarer, aka Walter MacGregor Robinson’s “Over The Top,” an account of a March 1919 crossing of a snow-covered pass in Wales. I’ve encountered writings along the way about how the the pioneers of what would become the Rough Stuff Fellowship included veterans using cycling over unlikely paths as part of healing.

Very interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10.5_c...nenwerfer_M_15

This particular Austrian mortar used a compressed air cylinder. I knew Lewis and Clark had compressed air firearms with them but never heard of these.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1c1b826f6.jpeg

Maybe it belongs in Foo.
Guns & bikes? Generally speaking = non-sequitur.

I appreciate your feedback, but I think I carefully skirted the various prohibitions against inclusion of images of weaponry or non-cycling related content. This thread is definitely historical, has plenty of cycling related discussion, and I ensured the thread title is sufficiently indicative of the content to ward off those who prefer not to read about such things. I have nothing against someone not being interested; just don't open the thread. One of the things I cherish about this forum since its inception is the relatively wide lane limits for the allowed topics and subsequent discourse. The "Foo" category really seems less appropriate than C&V, as there is a direct historical bent to this subforum, but I'll leave that to the mods to decide.

As an expat looking in I am appalled at the direction in our country regarding open discourse and challenging topics. The controlled-speech of our "higher learning" professional sports support institutions is exactly how we got to the massive divide we have now in our country. Now I'll admit that's probably an opinion best left to the Foo.

Thanks for those pics and info. I've had the luck to visit both of those very impressive monuments several times and come away very moved by the experience. The Canadians' use of a youth abroad program to staff the interpretive guides at BH one is particularly valuable and effective.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dcd49af994.jpg
The massive ediface at Vimy. The pic is a poor substitute and doesn't begin to convey the true scale.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...da442ce05f.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9076aaf230.jpg
Beaumont-Hamel
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b27f19ecd5.jpg
The other end of the B-H site, the story of the battle that happened here is heart-rending.

Very gently here - but there has ALWAYS been a nexus between bicycles and arms. Reynolds HM and 531 grew out of steels developed for military aviation; Royal Enfield had ties to the British Enfield arsenal; B.S.A., Chater Lea’s great rival in track racing parts and maker of the DP fixed/free gear hub, literally stands for Birmingham Small Arms.

Then there are the experiments- soldiers trained to be mounted rifles, awheel rather than horseback; pre-WWI photos of trikes and tandems fitted with early machine guns and light artillery; and the use of bicycles as mules in the long war in Vietnam, including the encirclement of the French at Dien Bien Phu.

The history of the bicycle is like so much else in human history - it can encompass the best and the worst of human nature and human experience.

I would not dream of advocating turning this into a political forum, save for this - knee jerk censorship (and I am NOT accusing anyone HERE of doing that!) and insisting that every statement must pass a litmus test that denies that there can be legitimate differences in opinion, values and experience, coupled with the pants-wetting fear of litigation and the over-expansive definition of safety to include defining opinions we don’t like as assault - that pretty much kills the spirit of free inquiry.

And now I think I’ll go have a lovely ride, and be grateful for a sunny if cool afternoon.

Same

There are also impressive remains of the great war to be found all across the Italian Alps, where Italian alpini and Austrian Kaiserjäger fought for years grimly. Many of the old fortifications and trenches are still there to visit, and a fair share of memorial monuments and cemeteries. A lot of these can be accessed by bike, road or gravel/MTB.

These are some shots I took on the Monte Grappa, Stage of the last big battle in that area, and now Italy's maybe most important war memorial.
https://fotos.rennrad-news.de/f/z9/3...1von1-13.jpg?0

https://fotos.rennrad-news.de/f/oo/x...1von1-14.jpg?0

https://fotos.rennrad-news.de/f/gd/z...1von1-11.jpg?0



https://fotos.rennrad-news.de/f/v7/0...1von1-10.jpg?0

Excellent photos. I'd really like to ride that area someday, and the history of WWI in that region is certainly dramatic. I love the pic of the trail through the rocks.

those were supply roads and these had to be on the off-side to the enemy, so they were often dug in steep mountain sides. In the sette communi not far from there, there are many of those around monte ortigara, mote Verena, Monte vezzena. Magnificent mountain biking there! Similar is to be found on the Pasubio and in the Garda lake area.

This is in the sette communi, the "sentiero del mulattieri" (mule Transport unit path)

https://fotos.rennrad-news.de/img/ph...iago1007.jpg?0

https://fotos.rennrad-news.de/img/ph...anatieri.jpg?0
The vertical drop in the 2nd picture is about 700m. Right down to the po flats. They could put a sign up "here the Alps end"