THE BICYCLE DIARIES – (Mostly) Light-Hearted War Stories of a Non-Combatant is the true story of a farm family’s trials and tribulations as they strive to stay alive during WW II. It takes place near Bastogne, in the Ardennes forest of southern Belgium, where the Screaming Eagles of the 82nd and 101st Airborne, of Band of Brothers fame, held the “hole in the doughnut” while the German SS troops ravaged the countryside during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The Bicycle recounts the tale with humor and suspense and is an active participant in the life of the family. The growing kid spends so much time with his mother’s bicycle that it becomes as real and alive as an imaginary pal. The use of such a literary device to tell the author’s memories in the third person avoids many of the pitfalls of personal memoirs. It does not take away, however, from the fears, courage and accomplishments of these simple folks, representative of millions more, for whom life went on, had to go on, regardless of the fighting madness taking place around them.

Denis J. Blaise was born in 1939 to a poor farm family in the Ardennes forest of southern Belgium. His earliest childhood recollections were of riding on his mother’s bicycle as they brought food to his father hiding from the Germans in WW II. The Battle of the Bulge, in December ’44, also left some pretty vivid images. Growing up in farm country, however, made for much happier times than living in the industrial city of Liege, where the family moved after the war. Thanks to a supportive mother, Blaise attended an academic high school, where he did well. In 1957, he received an international scholarship to live with an American family in upstate New York, and finish high school. “I was born when I was seventeen,” he is fond of saying, “that’s when I discovered kindness, opportunity and reward for hard work.” Blaise then earned several degrees from American universities and spent thirty years teaching French and Spanish from junior high school to college. He also holds a US Merchant Marine Master’s license and has been a charter boat captain and a guide-naturalist in the Everglades since his retirement in 1992. Blaise has two “genuine American kids”: one in education, the other in finance. He lives with his wife in southwest Florida, where they enjoy bird watching, ballroom dancing and motorcycle riding: 196,000 miles in 44 countries in the last seventeen years.