Tour de France 2014 honors 1914 Tour riders

On my post of July 9, 2014, I showed pictures of the start of the Tour de France in England (click here.)  On Sunday 27 July, 2014, the Tour ended on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.  The Tour lasted three weeks and was made up of 21 stages which covered a total distance of 3,664 kilometers or 2,276.7 miles (about the distance between Atlanta, Georgia and Los Angeles, California.)  There were 9 flat stages, 5 hill stages, 6 mountain stages, 1 individual time-trial stage and 2 rest days.  The last stage ending in Paris was won by Marcel Kittel of Germany.

The winner of the 2014 Tour de France is Vincenzo Nibali of Italy.  He had the most overall points and wore the yellow jersey 18 days out of 21.  Nibali is a strong rider and has also won the Vuelta a Espana in 2010 and the Giro d'Italia in 2013.  He rides for the team Astana of Kazakhstan.  The general manager of this team is a former racer, and one of my favorite riders, Alexander Vinokourov (he also won a gold medal at the Olympic Games of 2012) and is shown below in the middle right of the collage.  The green jersey went to Peter Sagan of Slovakia, the polka dot jersey to Rafal Majka of Poland and the white jersey to Thibaut Pinot of France.

Since I retired in early 2008 I have been able to watch the Tour de France live on TV.  For me, in Georgia, it usually starts around 8:00 am, sometimes earlier, and ends around 11:30 pm to noon.  I never plan any activity or trip in July so I can watch it every year.  I enjoy the race but I also love to look at all the various roads in and out of the little villages in France.  The helicopter coverage gives an excellent view of the landscape along the race.

It is always a thrill at the end of the race to see the riders arriving in Paris and watching their eight laps around the Champs-Elysees.

The first three stages of the Tour started in England.  The Tour organizers decided to have the next seven stages take place along 1914 Belgian and French battlefields to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers of the Great War.  As a sad coincidence, the 1914 Tour de France started on June 28, 1914, which was the day of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and his wife (that led to the outbreak of the war a few weeks later.)  The 1914 edition of the Tour had 15 stages totaling more than 5,400 kilometers or 3,355.4 miles (farther than the distance across the USA since Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington is 3,298 miles.)  The 1914 Tour de France was won by the Belgian Philippe Thys - his second win.  He would win a third time in 1920.  The Tour was suspended during the war and started again in 1919.  Below is the 1914 route, the 2014 route, a vintage photo of the 1914 start of the Tour and Philippe Thys.  (Click on collage to enlarge.)

It may seem strange to some here now, that a major international sporting event would go out of its way to include a tribute to soldiers from a long ago war, mostly unremembered in the US.  On November 11, 1919 US President W. Wilson established Armistice Day to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany and to honor its dead.  Later on it was changed into Veteran's Day.  In France, Belgium and New Zealand it is still Armistice Day, in England it is Remembrance Day.  With roughly 20 million deaths (1,400,000 in France) or a total of 37,466,904 casualties - this was a dreadful war not to be consigned to oblivion.  The memory of this war is still vivid in France.  I think every family there knows of a family member, or friend who died in this war.  My grand-father was in WWI and several of my grand-mother's cousins died there.  There are roughly 36,000 war monuments in France - each large city, town or village has one with the list of their fallen, even in the small suburban town near Paris where I spent my teenage years, St. Leu la Foret. (Click on the collage to read the name of the towns.)

 In France these monuments were built, not to glorify victory, but to honor those who died during the war.  The monuments were mostly financed by citizens in each town but also by war veterans who made up 90% of men aged 20-50 years in France in those days.  Eight million men were called up to the war, 1.4 million died and 3 million were injured in a population of 40 million at the time.  These monuments were erected in the hope that their sacrifice had not been in vain and that this war would be the last war, the war to end all wars.  All the monuments say "Mort pour la France" (died for France.)  The city of Washington, DC, has a WWI monument but in the nation's capital there is no "national" monument as a US memorial to its veterans of WWI.

As Peter Kuznick, professor at the American University in Washington says "This is a forgotten war."  I asked one of my friends, an educator, why young people here are uninterested in history.  She replied that history has been squeezed out of the school curriculum for the benefit of math, business, science and other subjects more relevant to helping students find a job and making money.  In France at least education still includes history as a major subject, as well as geography and foreign languages.  Below is a book for children.  I translated the title - The 2 world wars explained to the youngest.

A professor in a Texas university tested entering students for historical knowledge and reported that "the degree of historical ignorance was considerable."  It is too bad, because when wars are forgotten it is easier to start new wars, such as Iraq.  In France many people were affected by WWI, even from well known families.  Doctor Robert Proust, the brother of writer Marcel Proust (author of "In search of Lost Time" formerly known as "Remembrance of Things Past") was called up on August 2, 1914, and was posted near Verdun.  He survived the war and was decorated for courage.  Below is an excerpt from a letter Marcel sent to a friend on August 2, 1914 - "I have just seen off my brother who was leaving for Verdun at midnight.  Alas he insisted on being posted to the actual border."

Some 424 French sport greats including 78 cyclist gave their lives in the storm of 14-18 including three Tour de France winners: Lucien Mazan, nicknamed Petit Breton (1882-1917) winner in 1907 and 08, Francois Faber (1887-1915) winner in 1909 and Octave Lapizee (1887-1917) winner in 1910.

During the seven stages commemorating the fallen cyclists of WWI the Tour went from Flanders to the Vosges.  The riders followed the paths of the Great War and rode by historic sites and battles.  Stage 5 started in Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium.  This is where the first gas attack occurred against Canadians, British and French soldiers.  Now Ypres has the title of "City of Peace" and has close ties to another town, "Hiroshima."  Below are postcards of Ypres before, during and after the war.

For Stage 6 the Tour rode on the Chemin des Dames ("Ladies Path" named thus as it was the route used by two daughters of French King Louis XV) while going from Arras to Reims.  Three battles were fought along the Chemin des Dames in 1914, 1917 and 1918.  The final count was 271,000 French casualties and 163,000 German casualties.  That day the Tour riders wore a "bleuet de France" (cornflower) the symbol of WWI veterans.  You can see a bleuet/cornflower on the jersey of the riders, below, during the podium presentation.  (In Canada the word "bleuet" is used for blueberries instead of the French word "myrtille" for that fruit.  I wonder what word is used in French Canada for cornflower then?)

For Stage 7 the Tour went from Epernay to Nancy and rode by l'Ossuaire de Douaumont (The Douaumont Ossuary.)   It contains the remains of soldiers who died during the Battle of Verdun.  The Battle of Verdun lasted 300 days (Feb. 21, 1916 to Dec. 16, 1916) and resulted in 230,000 deaths out of a total 714,231 casualties (or an average of 70,000 casualties for each month of the battle.)  Recent estimates increased the casualty number to 976,000.  The officials of the Tour de France placed a wreath at the Verdun monument.  Below is the ossuary, the battlefield then and now, still showing scars.

This week-end French President Francois Hollande is meeting with the President of Germany, Joachim Gauck (Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany.)  They are commemorating WWI which started in France a hundred years ago today, August 3, 1914.  They are meeting at the Hartmannswillerkopf Memorial, a French National Monument in the Vosges mountain of Alsace.  A bitter battle was fought there with 30,000 French casualties.

The French President emphasized that "this Franco-German commemoration is a testament to the strength of the friendship between the two countries that allows them to look at their shared history, including its most dramatic period."  Tomorrow, Monday August 4th, 2014, the two presidents will go to Liege, Belgium to commemorate with a dozen other leaders the centennial of the invasion of Belgium by the troops of the Reich.  The French President said that "These commemorations are a way to celebrate Franco-Belgian friendship and French debt to Belgium for its fierce resistance to the invasion."  Also on August 4th there will be a joint British-German memorial ceremony at the St. Symphorien Military Cemetery near Mons, Belgium.

This is a somber subject, so I'll explain why the "bleuet de France" (cornflower) is the symbol of memory and solidarity for veterans, victims of war, widows and orphans.  On the battlefields even though all plant life was almost gone because of bomb shelling, the cornflower and poppy survived and were the only bright colors on the desolate battlefields.  France chose the cornflower as a symbol and Britain the poppy.  The term "bleuet" also referred to the young French recruits of 1915 who wore horizon-blue uniforms while the older soldiers' uniforms had turned grey with mud.

At the end of WWI France had millions of wounded veterans, some seriously handicapped and unable to work.  In 1925 two French women established workshops where the men could make little lapel pins from blue tissue paper or fabric to sell to the public and thus give them an occupation and income.  The organization became "Le Bleuet de France" and with the backing of the French Government it continues today to support veterans and their families.

The Latin name of the bleuet (cornflower) is Centaurea cyanus.  It has several symbolic meanings and one meaning I like is "Wealth, prosperity, fortune and friendship."