For non-mechanised infantry of the mid 20th century, the bliss of being able to pedal for many tens of miles rather than walk carrying your gear under a hot sun would make carrying the bike on some occasions eminently worthwhile, I'd say. I've been walking across Spain in stages as a project. It gets damned hard on the feet. I have very much envied the cyclists who have breezed past me at twenty miles an hour when I was stumbling along downhill at 3 with a sore back and my gear chaffing at my shoulders. I think that pushing and even carrying the bike on some stretches would have been worth the trouble.



By the way - I was wondering why they weren't riding those bikes in that kind of terrain, but on reflection, and thinking about the era of the pictures, they were probably single speed bikes with a gear ratio of about 56 inches. You could't ride far cross country on that kind of gearing. My atb goes down to about 20 inches and you could ride that on such a landscape.