I'm at about 130,000 words on my ode to my Grandfather's experiences on the continent during the invasion of France in 1940 (think Dunkirk mixed with the motorcycle chase from The Great Escape). There is only about a week left before they escape occupied France just in time to return home to face the Battle of Britain (Dunkirk already happened 2 weeks ago). I think it'll will end up at about 150,000 words but a harsh first edit should get it back down to around 120,000. Even with hundreds of hours of research into it, I can only guess at how he must have felt over that year. He finished 1940 by being sent to the Ivory Coast via ship and then driving across the Sahara Desert (in 1940 vehicles during a war) to fight Rommel in the desert. It's all quite impossible.
I'm a stickler for details and got lost this morning before work (I like to get up about 5am and write until 7:30) in Michelin Maps of 1930s France. A closer look at these incredible pieces of cartographic history shows you an astonishing piece of hand-drawn art:
Consider the layers on there: place names, roads, railroads, forests, rivers, regional boundaries and names, it's a complex piece of visual information, and if you look at the writing closely, it's hand drawn! This is a 1939 revision of an existing map. It's pre computers and digital imaging. To put this together they would have had to collect existing maps, surveyor documentation and historical documents and then combine it all together, and all while keeping on top of changes.
You'd be travelling across a world that feels empty by modern standards. There 75% LESS people on the planet in 1939 than there are in 2021. You couldn't read the map on the move, you'd have to stop, and the vehicle you were riding would demand it in any case. No rushing, no 'efficiency' demanded by an over crowded world overheating from overuse. No traffic jams because motorized vehicles were still relatively new. The roads you're on are newly minted.
Today we sit in our air conditioned boxes that require no effort to run (even as they burn a hole in the world), and drive to get everywhere as quickly as possible. The serendipity of looking at a map and noticing something not on your route and going to discover it is gone in the focused and linear directions being fed to you by a remorseless voice in your ear. Our overpopulated modern world demands nothing less than absolute efficiency and constant surveillance.
Imagine it's the spring of 1939. There are rumblings of a dark future, but that is still just conjecture. You pick up your new Triumph Tiger 100, so named because it'll do 100mph, and sort it out for a ride across France. Riding out of my home county of Norfolk in the east of England and south to the ferry and the continent isn't a slog through endless traffic on soulless, paved multi-lane roads. There are only a quarter as many people (2 billion to our almost 8) in the world in 1939, and they aren't relentlessly mobile like today's population; many work where they live. You pick your way along simple two lane roads through a Constable landscape painting interrupted by Norfolk villages that haven't changed in millenia.
You're not thumping down a highway with a computerized voice barking step by step directions and then frantic corrections if you miss a turn. No one is tracking your every move, you're free in the world on two wheels.
You stop frequently but this doesn't make you crazy with impatience, it's an opportunity to lay your eyes on that beautiful map designed by people for human eyes and admire the futuristic yet still hand-made engineering that moves you.
You stop for the night at a pub on the south coast and look over your new Michelin map while enjoying the last proper English ale you'll taste for several weeks. The hand written names nestled together in the brightly coloured map sound strange and new as you sound them out, but the continent beckons, and your fantastic new motorbike will take you there.
