A hundred years ago today on Sunday, June 28, 1914, 145
cyclists rolled out of Paris for the 12th edition of the Tour de
France. The race was already an
established sporting event and national icon and fans look forward to the
competition, which featured seven previous winners (in addition to four future
winners). On the same day 1800 kms to
the southeast in Sarajevo the heir-presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne,
the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife died by the hand of an
assassin. Two days after the Tour ended
on July 26 back in Paris, Austro-Hungary, unsatisfied with the response to its
ultimatum, launched an invasion of Serbia.
The bike race to end all bike races thus had a strange coincidental
overlap with what was to become the launching of the War to End All Wars. In his new book, “the Shattered Peloton,”
Graham Healy has provided an unusual perspective during this centenary year
marking the start of World War I—what was its effect on professional bike
racing?
This seems like a question of laughably little consequence
and the book is poorly served by its subtitle: “The Devastating Impact of World
War I on the Tour de France.” The number
of professional cyclists was very small and the comparative handful who died in
the war (32 Tour de France participants) pale beside the huge number of
casualties, totalling an estimated 17 million military and civilian deaths and
23 million wounded. In the cases of
France, Germany and Austria-Hungary more than 4% of the total population
perished. However, the book is to be recommended for telling the stories of
some of those cyclists (not all of them Tour de France riders either) and their
terrible experiences in battle, experiences that would have been duplicated in
the thousands by soldiers from other jobs and professions and social classes. What we really see is “The Devastating Impact
of World War I on Everyone.” The war
devastated Europe (nicely described in the account of the first Paris-Roubaix
after hostilities ended) but not really the Tour, which was restarted,
admittedly with some difficulty, a mere
seven months after the Armistice.
June 28, 1914: the Grand Depart! |
The book begins by describing that 1914 Tour in some detail
and one has a good flavour of the chaotic happenings that made the race so
interesting, In the end Philippe Thys of
Belgium would go on to win the overall for the second time. Interesting details included the unspecified
abuse apparently suffered by two Australian riders and an enthusiastic crowd so
enamoured of Henri Pélissier that in their enthusiasm they blocked their
countryman’s way and ruined any chance of him winning. The chapter is interspersed with some
diplomatic history about what was happening as political events moved forward
in European capitals but these have an add-on feel, breaking the Tour narrative
up. There are a number of instances in
the book where the narrative takes detours unrelated to the central subject,
such as the enlistment of sportsmen who were famous for other things, such as
football/rugby/tennis/piano player pilot Roland Garros or boxer Georges
Carpentier.
The founder of the Tour de France, Henri Desgrange, wrote an
editorial (in red ink!) in l’Auto
calling, in what to us is astonishingly jingoistic language, for Frenchmen to
enlist in the war to defeat “the evil imbeciles” from Germany. Desgrange himself enlisted in 1917, at age
50, and even spent some time at the front.
Lucien Petit-Breton, ready to race |
Even more interesting are the accounts of the riders who
rode in the Tour and did not place particularly highly or even finish. One rider named Emile Engel, a friend of
Fabre, was banned from the 1914 Tour by Desgrange, who by all accounts was a
thorough martinet, for arguing with a commissionaire and was to die at the
First Battle of the Marne in September that year. Many of these riders are obscure but their
fates nevertheless received compassionate treatment from the author. It is sad to read of so many of these brave
young men being chewed up by the great war machine in numbers that would seem
incredible.
Emile Engel, left, and Francois Fabre |
Some of the stories amply illustrate the confusion and
stupidity of events. Paul Deman, the
first Tour of Flanders winner and three-time Tour de France participant,
carried messages for the Belgians by bicycle during the war and was caught by
the Germans. Sentence to die, the
execution was not carried out as the Armistice intervened. British soldiers took over and unable to tell
the difference between Flemish and German imagined Deman to be a German spy and
planned his execution before a timely letter from Belgian authorities saved his
life.
On June 29, 1919, a day after the signing of the Treaty of
Versailles and five years and a day after the start of the previous race, the
first post-war Tour de France took place.
The author writes:” The effect that the First World War had on
professional cycling was immense.” But
the fact that it started again so soon after hostilities and that a new
generation of riders had appeared—many
of those who died, such as Fabre, Lapize and Petit-Breton were already no
longer competitive when the war began—belies this statement.
This is not a book for reading about the origins of World
War I in detail (“The Sleepwalkers,” a blockbuster by historian Christopher
Clark is that book) and some of the general research is a bit doubtful (Roland
Garros, for example, is wrongly described as the developer of tractor
propellers for fighter aircraft). But as a view of the war taken from an unusual
angle and focusing on the lives of those involved moving from being suddenly
transformed from celebrated sports figures to common soldiers (no officers
here) the book Is well worth reading in this year when we can expect a great wave
of Great War-themed publications. On
that early Sunday morning in 1914 in Paris the world was a different place. The
Tour de France may have been merely postponed for four years but the real and
terrible effect of the war on a human scale is told here with pity and with
affection.
The Shattered Peloton: The Devastating
Impact of World War I on the Tour de France
By Graham Healy
221 pp., ill., paperback, Breakaway Books, 2014
ISBN 978-1-62124-011-2
Suggested price: US$14.95
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