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
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.
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.
This is his commemorative plaque inside the chapel at the huge French cemetery of Notre Dame de Lorette
And his commemorative plaque in the city park of Luxembourg:
