The

The The

The Hey folks, welcome to the battles of the First World War podcast.

Joining us this evening is Mr. Brett Hawks,

a fellow resident of Cape Ann here in Massachusetts. Brett was brought to my attention a few months ago

when he gave a talk at a local club one evening in the early summer. The subject of the talk

was how Brett has bicycled his way across France,

following in his grandfather's World War I footsteps. Well, not a shocker. You can bet I attended that

talk. And it was a fantastic evening. And as I listened, one of my first thoughts was, I've got to get this gentleman on the podcast to tell his story to the podcast community. And so here we are. Right. Brett, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Sure. Well, thanks. I'm on. Actually, this is a big moment for me. This is my first podcast of my whole life.

Yay.

I'm 73 years, right?

Well, that's awesome. So I'm going to tell you I can't promise fame and fortune, but, you know, like...

No, it's all right. It's all right. It's great. Great to be here and great to communicate.

I think, why don't I just start out, give a little brief background on my

grandfather, and then how I got involved, and then I'll talk about the trip and all of the nuances

of the trip and we'll go through it sort of methodically. But please ask questions. I always leave stuff out and,

you know, I love to be prompted on certain things. So all my life I had known my grandfather

was in the First World War. He was pretty consistent with most soldiers that came back from war.

It was pretty horrific over there, and they didn't talk about it very much.

But I did know that he had received the Quatergare, which is a fairly prestigious honor,

and that he had been wounded, that I had had known and he didn't live near me so i i sort

of knew him as a far away grandfather okay and and then he died when i was when i was 16 years old

...