An American cycle tours in Europe, 16 December 1944

[Sid Aluminium]

On December 16th, 1944, American doctor Major Clifford Graves went on a short cycle tour in Eastern Belgium.

Dr. Graves was a combat surgeon supporting the 106th Division and enjoying a quiet pre-Christmas respite in the war tempo when 25 German divisions broke through the lines, beginning what is known today as the Battle of the Bulge.

With the German tanks only miles away, Major Graves unloaded his medical equipment truck and on-boarded as many casualties from the field hospital as possible. By the time he got this organized and sent the truck west on the narrow road, the German tanks had arrived at the far end of the small village where the field hospital was located.

Dr. Graves didn’t want to be captured. What to do? Well, in the year and a half he’d spent in England before D-Day, he’d purchased a derailleur geared touring bicycle and done a little touring in England, Scotland and Wales. He’d surreptitiously crated the bicycle and included it in the medical equipment when they’d deployed to France the previous June. He hurriedly broke the crate apart and assembled his bicycle. By the time he got the tires pumped, the lead Panzer was just a block away. With a farewell to the GIs in the village who had no transportation, he rode out on the main road right in front of the lead German tank and pedaled away.

It was a horrible, cold, wet, desperate cycle tour that day, Dr. Graves barely staying ahead of the blitzkrieging Panzers. Graves came under German airborne ground attack, being strafed and at one point bombed. He passed through Malmedy and briefed members of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion about what he knew of the situation behind him. These GIs would be captured and murdered by SS troopers the next morning.

Late in the afternoon Major Graves arrived at Spa, where some sketchy semblance of order had been established in the retreat. Reporting to the temporary HQ, he created as much of a sensation as possible under the chaotic conditions when he explained to command that he’d escaped the German advance on a bicycle. As an orderly defense was thrown together, he was given a medical truck and a driver and told to head south to Bastogne, where heavy fighting was reported and resultant casualties anticipated. Command warned Graves at Spa that German soldiers wearing American uniforms had been captured during the day.

He tossed his bike in the back of the deuce-and-a-half and they headed out in the gathering twilight. Well after dark he and his driver thought they were on the main road to Bastogne, but observed the road they were on was getting narrower, not wider. Major Graves decided they had taken a wrong turn and should backtrack on what had become a tiny country lane, and he told his driver to wait while he scouted ahead on his bicycle for a place they could turn the big truck around without getting stuck. Just up the way he found a small crossroads. Returning to the truck he informed his driver and led him to the turn-around. As the driver was executing a multi-point turn, Graves spotted by the light of an inexplicably burning farm house what he assumed must be an American tank column approaching. He rode his bicycle up to the front tank, waving his handkerchief, pointing and shouting that there was a truck blocking the road just up ahead. The tank hatch popped open and the commander shouted something back.

Graves realized the officer was shouting in German.

He quickly analyzed the situation. He guessed they hadn’t shot him or just run him down with the tank because, due to his bold approach on a bicycle, they had misidentified him as one of the German saboteurs. He shouted back to the tank commander the only German that came to mind: ‘Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja!’ With a wave, he turned the bike around and sprinted back down the road. He tossed his bike in the truck and told his driver to head back to secure American territory as fast as they could go.

Dr. Graves survived the day without getting captured, and survived the war. In the post-war occupation he did some more touring on the Continent before returning to America and setting up a surgery practice in La Jolla, California. With the enthusiastic support of other like-minded Americans, he founded the International Bicycle Touring Society and toured throughout North America, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and China. He is considered the grandfather of the American Bicycle Touring Holiday industry.

Decades later, Dr. Graves related his amazing story in Bicycling! and American Wheelman magazines and made it the lead chapter in his autobiography, ‘My Life on Two Wheels’.

More on Dr. Graves:
https://www.bicycleadventureclub.org/do ... 20Club.pdf


Take away: Always bring your bicycle. You’ll almost certainly have more fun than if you don’t bring it, and you never know - it could save your life.

[yostumpy]

I enjoyed that little tale. Would make an excellent film.

[mercalia]

Thanks for sharing in these dark days. Would have made a great Ealing or Boulting bros film. The made that type of film in the day. I bet he wish he had a Brompton would be a good advert for the bike?

Have Brompton, Avoid the Nazis
A Brompton a day keeps the Nazis at bay


any other one liners?

[TrevA]

Reminded me of James Coburn’s character in The Great Escape, who escapes the Germans by stealing a bicycle and riding off on it.

[m-gineering]

I bet he wish he had a Brompton would be a good advert for the bike?

unlikely, he was very much into top off the bill French constructeur touring bikes like Herse, so he might have settled for a Demontable

[Sid Aluminium]

Dr. Graves' first bicycle purchase after he shipped out from the USA to the UK was a well-used and abused machine from Halfords 'with a defective Sturmey-Archer hub with only two working gears'. (Hmph? They aren't that hard to repair. Whatever.) Anyway, this old 'two-speed' is the bike he toured England on (1942).

BTW, as a medical surgeon Major Graves certainly saw the worst of humanity - soldiers with their guts blown out, fifteen-year-old Hitler youth shot to pieces, widows and orphans, and endless starving, homeless, displaced people. That understood, he mentions in his book that wartime and occupation cycle touring was GREAT - the roads were absolutely empty and he was practically the only one out and about in the countryside who had hard currency.

Anyway, he relates a humorous sort of "knock at the back door, tell him David sent you" tale of buying a lovely, new 'ten-speed' black market bike at F.W. Evans, and this was the bike he toured Scotland, Wales (1943), Belgium (just ahead of the German tanks!) (1944), occupied Germany and liberated France (1945 & '46) on.

IIRC, he maintained a loyalty to top-shelf British bikes until - hmm - the late 1950s or early 1960s, when he succumbed to the Siren song the French 'constructeur' machines and purchased a chrome-plated demountable Herse.

[Sid Aluminium]

I've been reading 'Bad Teeth No Bar: A History of Military Bicycles in the Great War'.

I bet he wish he had a Brompton...

Always easy to refight wars from one's chair by the fire, but who knows, perhaps the 106th Infantry Divison could have employed several thousand Bromptons to good effect on December 16th, 1944, rapidly scattering through the Belgium countryside ahead of the advancing armor columns just as Dr. Graves had done, but setting up ambushes, traps, blowing bridges, flanking support troops and disappearing again down tiny country lanes to do it all over again.

[John Holiday]

What an amazing story.
Quite moving.
What our parents & grandparents generations went through!

[ConRAD]

I bet he wish he had a Brompton would be a good advert for the bike?

unlikely, he was very much into top off the bill French constructeur touring bikes like Herse, so he might have settled for a Demontable

Well, actually it seems that :
.... also around 1971 Clifford became aware of custom bicycles made by Rene Herse in France. These not only had features to help prevent breakdowns but the “Demontable” model split into two sections for transport. So the Doctor and a few other IBTS member ordered these chrome-plated Rene Herse bicycles.

[ConRAD]

... on December 16th, 1944, American doctor Major Clifford Graves went on a short cycle tour in Eastern Belgium ...

I loved reading all that story, thank you.