{"id":7501,"date":"2020-05-27T02:02:03","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T02:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crankpunk.com\/?p=7501"},"modified":"2020-05-27T02:22:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T02:22:57","slug":"the-bicycle-in-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crankpunk.com\/ja\/2020\/05\/27\/the-bicycle-in-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bicycle in War"},"content":{"rendered":"

War drives technology, as evidenced by the device I\u2019m using to write this article on and the one you are using to read it by, as well as by the internet that has delivered these words to you. These technologies were of course first utilized by the military-industrial complex before being repackaged for use by the wider society.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing\u00a0 how quickly things develop when they are to be used to facilitate either making money or killing folk! Yet whereas weapons and communication systems have morphed beyond all recognition, there is one \u2018weapon\u2019 that has been used by just about every nation on earth that has not altered much at all. That device, of course, is the bicycle. The basic form that we still ride has basically changed hardly a jot in over 100 years, but it has definitely been through the wars, so to speak.<\/p>\n

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A WW1 replica bike<\/em><\/p>\n

From Europe to China, Afghanistan to Japan, the bicycle has been at war. Way back even before World War One, then a modern invention, the bicycle was being used by French troops as a method of transport to and from the battlefields. It is still being utilized today, sadly, as a device to help people kill one another.<\/p>\n

In this video below, you can see British troops filmed in 1914 in training with their bicycles. Quite what use these would have been on the bloody, muddied Somme just a few short months later is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

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