The Bicycles of War

 

Private R.O. Potter of The Highland Light Infantry of Canada
 repairing his bicycle, France, 20 June 1944.

We didn't exactly storm the beaches when my family traveled through Normandy on bicycles.  We tottered along back roads and through the narrow streets of villages.  We were no army; just five Americans doing our best to absorb the sights, sounds and scents of a beautiful land.

Not everyone who's been on a bicycle had such idyllic purposes.

Bicycles were used more extensively during World War Two than I had ever guessed.  In 1939 every  Infantry Division within the Polish Army had a company of bicycle-riding scouts. that included 196 bicycles.  The Jaeger Battalions of the Finnish Army used bicycles to deploy rapidly against the 1941 advances of the Soviet Union, switching to skis when the snow became deep. The Finns were still using bicycles in 1944, when the Germans had destroyed so many Finnish roads that tanks and other heavy equipment had to be abandoned.

Bicycles were used in France by the occupying German forces.  They used bicycle patrols to cover areas quicker than patrols on foot and to send messages.  They were used more often as gas became more difficult to attain. 

The Allies used bicycles in France during World War II also.   Canada's Highland Light Infantry used bicycles to cover the French countryside quickly. You can see pictures of their bikes stacked within the landing craft that took them to the beach on my pinterest board:  http://www.pinterest.com/jbohnhoff/  

Even some of the American forces in France had bicycles.  US forces dropped folding bikes, called "bomber bikes" out of planes behind enemy lines for use by our paratroopers and for messengers and French Resistance fighters who were supporting us.  


I haven't included a single bike in Code: Elephants on the Moon.  Perhaps I should in a future revision of the manuscript.  Maybe by the time this book comes out in print (as opposed to an ebook) Sergeant Johannes Hegel will be leading his patrols through the narrow streets of Amblie and Reviers on bicycle.

Where Ideas come from

 

How do I get a story idea?  For me, it's a slow, rumbling process punctuated by flashes of ideas.  The early part of the story process is like a gathering storm, and I feel it in my bones more than know it with my conscious mind.  There's a restlessness, an unsettling feeling that something is building within me.  Slowly.  Unseen.  And then ideas start to come.  Some ideas are fleeting, mere sparks that leave little behind.  Many just fizzle away. Others seem brilliant: flashes on inspiration so strong that they burn themselves on my brain.  A very few of those ideas are true strikes.  They light up my mind, make everything seem clear and sharp.  They leave behind the clear scent of ozone, as rarified and pure as the thin air at altitude.

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The story known as  Elephants on the Moon  began on a train in 2005.  My family was on vacation and were traveling.  We took a plane to Paris, transferred to a train to Caen, then a bus to Ouistreham.  There we rented bikes to ride the 20 km to Amblie, a little Norman village where we had rented a house for the week.


We ended up sharing a seat with a man named Philippe.  At least, that's what I remember his name to be.  Being a writer, I have to admit that I fill in forgotten details with memories of things that have never been.  At the very least, I polish and refine those memories so that they make more sense to me.  Never sacrifice a good story line for truth.

Philippe was a poet and a playwright.  He had flowing brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and lively, hazel eyes.  He wore a linen poets shirt, the cuffs of the sleeves turned back over hands that had long, slender fingers that had seen their share of hard work.  My husband, on the other hand, remembers a man in a grimy t shirt that was stretched out at the neck, whose hair hadn't been combed in days if not weeks and whose fingernails needed a good long encounter with a nailbrush and soap. He agrees with me that the man, whatever his name, said that he was a playwright.

We talked for a while on books.  Philippe was not very impressed with what I had read of French literature.  Hugo and Flaubert were romantic hacks.  Dumas was quaint and populist.  Camus was almost worth talking about.  But the writers that he considered worthwhile were people whose names I had never heard.  Never mind the fact that I'd read everything in translation.  His English was close to impeccable.  My French was almost up to what a two year old might produce.  It was soon obvious that I couldn't hold up my end of this conversation.

Our talk turned to what we were doing.  We told him our plans: living in the country.  Biking to the Normandy beaches, to museums, to Caen and Bayeux.  Eating locally.  Speaking our terribly inadequate French and relying on the goodness of the French people to put up with us and forgive us our ellipses.  He told us that he was leaving the Parisian theater scene, which went a little slack in the summer anyway, to spend a holiday with his parents in Normanday.

And then the really interesting part of the conversation happened.  At least, for me the talk became interesting because it caused my thoughts to begin gathering.  Philippe talked about growing up in a provincial Norman town and why he had been compelled to move to the big city.  Normandy was such a backwater, he said, the people so provincial.  They cared little for literature or art.  They were concerned with local politics, which amounted to little more than petty family feuds that had raged for decades.  They thought of little except their cattle and crops, their small shops and businesses, their reputations.  And yet, despite all their trivial spats, the Normans were of one mind on one subject; they were better than their neighbors, the Bretons.

At this point, Philippe forgot his urbane, Parisian leanings and began to rant about the people from Brittany: how "unfrench" they were despite years of living on French soil.  How uncouth.  Uncultured.  Foreign.  And as he stormed on, the thunderheads of a story began building in my mind.  What would it be like to live among these people, who had lived together so long?  What would it be like to be a Breton among the Normans?  

Ideas began to rumble about like distant thunder.