Local resident Willie Reid is well known for leading walks around the historical sites of High Wycombe. He is also a cycling enthusiast and with a few friends he has just completed a cycle ride along the Western Front. 

Willie has agreed to share that experience with readers of the Bucks Free Press Nostalgia page. He writes:

Cycling, as a popular pastime, was established in the late 19th century and bicycle units in the army were in existence by end of that century. 
Early in to the First World War a British poster posed the question ‘Why not cycle for the king?’

As an example the poster for recruits to the South Midland Divisional Cyclist Company specified ‘Must be 19; willing to serve abroad; cycles provided; uniform and clothing issued on enlistment; bad teeth no bar’!
Cycle recruits were used as messengers, ambulance carriers and even infantry by both sides in World War 1. 

And ironically the first action on the Western Front was by a platoon of Germans who invaded Belgium on bicyles.

So, 100 years on, I thought that by pedalling along the line of the Western Front would offer an interesting way of trying to get closer to discovering what life was like on the battlefields and in the trenches in WW1. 

Four friends agreed to join me and our wives acted as the back-up team.
As we cycled across the terrain in northern France and southern Belgium there is little evidence today to show that this was the stage for so much slaughter and carnage from 1914 to 1918. 

Most of it is now farmland growing crops which might well finish up on French, British or even German tables. Occasionally the fields give up their history with rusty rifles, shrapnel or unexploded shells and will continue to do so, one expert suggests, for another 700 years. 

What is also noticeable is how flat the countryside is here, which meant that most days it required little effort to reach our destination. That and thanks to Google Maps which plots cycle routes too!

However, you cannot escape for long without coming across the historical military aspects of the First World War, especially cemeteries full of crosses - many British but also French, Belgian, Italian, Indian, South African, Australian, Canadian, Portuguese and New Zealand. And of course German ones as well. In total men from more than 50 nations fought in that war.

In every cemetery we entered the gravestones stood in serried ranks as if the men who lie under them might have been standing to attention on parade. 

It is mind-numbing to see so many with British and German gravestones often staring at each other just a few yards apart. You read the plethora of names on the stones in row after row, in cemetery after cemetery, with many just stating ‘A soldier of the Great War - Known unto God.’ 

And you wonder why so many men were destined to die in a war which the last surviving Tommie of the First World War, Harry Patch, described as ‘nothing but a family row.’

Then there are the monuments which can be seen from miles away. The largest of these is at Thiepval where the names of 72 000 British and Commonwealth troops, with no known grave, are remembered. 

It was here that I found the name of Capt. Edward Alfred Shaw of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry who died on October 7, 1916 at the age of 24. He was the eldest son of Edward Domett Shaw, vicar of All Saints Parish Church (1895-1910) in High Wycombe, and later First Bishop of Buckingham.

And I wondered how this man was able to hold on to his faith when two of his other sons also died in the carnage of World War 1. 

Lt Bernard Henry Shaw of the West Yorkshire Regiment died on 18 December 1914 age 21 and is remembered on the Le Touret Memorial, whilst Lt. Arthur Gilbey Shaw’s grave can be found in the Menin Road South Military Cemetery just outside Ypres showing that he died on 24 December 1915 at the age of 19. 

All three brothers are also remembered in a stained glass window in All Saints.

Towards the end of our Pilgrimage to Picardy we passed under the Menin Gate which highlights the names of some 54,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who have no known grave. 

Here, since 1929, the local fire brigade has played the Last Post at 20.00 hours every night apart from the time the Germans occupied the town during the Second World War. 

It was a moving occasion with around 500 people turning up to witness the spectacle. Here we also heard some retired guardsmen play the popular song of the time ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’.”

Look out for the continuation of Willie’s account in future Nostalgia pages.