WW100: Honouring the New Zealand Cyclist Corps

William Massey inspecting the NZ Cyclists Corps, 3 July 1918.  From nzhistory.govt.nz

Our time in France coincides with the last half of the centenary of the First World War; the 100 years since New Zealand’s involvement shifted from the Middle East and North Africa, to when the NZ Division fought on the Western Front in France and Belgium. Representing New Zealand at various commemorative events has been an occasional but important part of my work here, and the war commemorations are an important strand in the relationship between France and New Zealand. Before we came to Paris I started to give a bit of thought to what I could do to honour the service and sacrifice of the New Zealand armed forces as part of the WW100 commemorations.  Not surprisingly my thinking was cycling related.  There had to be some cycling-relevant aspect to all this: Bike messengers? Medics on wheels? Scouts? Well, those initial thoughts were the top of a very slippery slope leading to  something that’s shaping up to be pretty special involving cobblestones, memorial trophies, and a special two week WW1 commemorative Spring Classics cycle tour.  It’s going to be great.  There’s a fair bit of backstory involved, so I’ll try and chunk it all out into useful bits. It involves a few people too, each of us operating in our own particular orbit, with the good bits happening where those orbits intersect.

How it all came about..

Like I say, I’d had some initial thoughts. If there were cyclist messengers, maybe I could organise something like a commemorative “mail run” fun ride at some point? Or get a bunch of kiwis together, print up a bit of WW1 commemorative kit and enter something like the Paris-Roubaix sportive as a memorial gesture?

But it didn’t take much Googling to discover something much more useful and significant. It turns out that New Zealand had a dedicated cyclists corps that served on the Western Front. To me, that’s interesting in and of itself. I mean, who knew? I sure didn’t. And it seems that not many other people do either, because theirs is a bit of an untold story. They don’t get much of a mention in the official histories of the New Zealand Division, mostly because they weren’t really part of it. That might seem a bit odd, and I’m still trying to figure it all out, but it seems that they were a separate specialist unit.

I figured that getting their story told was my golden opportunity

An untold story means there’s little available history. But they did produce an official Battalion history.  A company in the UK that prints facsimile copies of out-of-print military histories listed it as being available on their website, so I duly ordered a copy.

While that was on its way, I got thinking.  I figured that I probably wouldn’t have much capacity to do anything much by myself. This kind of thing is not, strictly speaking, part of my proper day job. So I’d be needing to “leverage some resources” and get some other people on board.

A NZCC sign board from WW1.

My first thought – as always – was all about the biking. How could we link up something on wheels with something thing commemorative? I’d remembered reading something in the paper about a kiwi company that does tours to France for the Tour de France, so I tracked down the guy that runs it. My email to him basically said “I have this idea for maybe doing something to remember some cyclists who served in France during WW1, which could possibly have something to do with the Paris-Roubaix, whaddya reckon?” And to his eternal credit Karl Woolcott from Ride Holidays replied right back basically saying “funny you should ask, because just his week I’ve started planning for my first ever Spring Classics tour, and something like that could be a handy way to fill a gap between the Tour of Flanders and Paris Roubaix. Let’s talk.” And thus the Ride Holidays Spring Classics & WW1 Centenary Commemoration tour was born. With Karl’s expertise and Ride Holidays running the show it’ll be epic – it’ll be worth of a blog post or two all of its own, and so I’ll say more about that later.

I also figured I needed to bone up on the actual historical aspects (also my copy of the battalion history was taking a really long time to arrive and I can get very impatient). So I talked to our overall coordinator for WW100 commemorations back in Wellington, and she put me in touch with historian Jamie Mackay at our Ministry of Culture and Heritage. Turns out he’s a keen cyclist, and had already made a start on some research into the cyclists corp, which prompted another “whaddya reckon”/”yeah sounds good” exchange. And lo and behold we have a proper historian on board. More on that later, too.

Like most cyclists, I find riding around does great things for disengaging the active brain and allowing thoughts to float around. Full of the joys of cobblestones and Belgian beer, I slowly came to the idea of maybe doing something a bit more permanent to commemorate the cyclists. I figured, they must have been riding along cobblestoned roads.  I like to think about cobblestones.  Most cyclists like to think about cobblestones. And a hunk of granite pave is the most coveted trophy in cycling… why not a cobblestone trophy to commemorate the service and sacrifice of these young men?

Mmm…. cobblestones…

I had a couple of email conversations with Andrew Matheson and Graeme Hunn, CEO and High Performance Manager at Cycling New Zealand.  And without too much arm twisting, the idea of NZCC commemorative trophy, to be presented to the national Under-23 champion at the road nationals next January, is taking shape. More on that soon, too. And sooner rather than later, because thanks to the good people who run the Flanders classics (think Gent-Wevelgem and the Tour of Flanders) and the Mayor of Heuvelland, it’s looking like we’re about to take delivery of a cobblestone from the Kemmelberg.

So yeah, it’s getting bigger than Ben Hur.

The missing piece of it all was how best to capture all this for, like, posterity. What about a TV documentary to tell the story? I had some initial very enthusiastic conversations with a NZ TV producer and cycling enthusiast, but it seems the pressures of producing a daily current affairs programme and weekly news satire are fairly intense, so there’s a good chance that won’t bear fruit.  Karl tells me there a couple of people booked on the tour with some interesting links to the cyclists, and stories to tell, so there’s a great story in there to build something around. So if anyone out there knows of someone with a bit of resource and a lot of enthusiasm who might be interested in following this, then by all means get them to get in touch with me – contact details below.

But, of course, #PrintIsNotDead, so even if we can’t do something for the telly, there’s more than one way to create a lasting record. I’ve been in touch with Russell Jones who writes for what was NZ Road Cyclist, but is now the re-launched New Zealand Cycling Journal.  Russell had already done a bit of research and published an article in the magazine a year or two back, but he’s keen-as to see what we can do to get something into print as well.  So, between us we’ll have it well covered.

So that’s where things are at.  The wheels are in motion, and the big events will be early next year.  Once things take a bit more shape I’ll post some updates from time to time.  But feel free to share, spread the word, invite people can get in touch with me below, whatever.  Last time I spoke with Karl at Ride Holidays he said his Spring Classics tour was already over-subscribed and with a wait-list.  But some of the key details for the tour are still to be locked in, so there’s a possibility that wait-list spots might clear if people drop out.   If you know of anyone that’s keen I’m sure Karl would be pleased to hear from them. We’re also keen to hear from anyone with a bit more history of the NZ cyclists in WW1.  Photos, diaries, possibly even historical footage (we have tantalising hints that there’s some out there somewhere).  In the meantime you can read a bit more about what Karl and Jamie have been up to on www.stuff.co.nz, and more of  Jamie’s work on the official WW100 website, and over at nzhistory.govt.nz.

Feel free to share, or ‘like’ down below so you can sign-up automatic notifications when I post something new. It’s going to be great.