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[Bill Murray]

Hi Lex:

I cannot speak for the other members, but most of them know that my specific interest in the military vehicle hobby is the history of US make military wheeled vehicles sold to or assembled in other countries during the period 1935-1945.

The "French Contract" or "Ex French Contract" vehicles have always been of interest to me but there are not a lot of photos out there either in Forums or books, on Ebay or Google or whatever.

Primarily through Bart Vanderveen's books, we do know that White, Chevrolet, GMC and Dodge vehicles were contracted for by the French in 1940 and there is a fair body of knowledge about this but not too many photos.

If I may ask, if you have a photo archive of such vehicles, could you share some of that with us on this Forum as you have the time.

Thanks,
Bill

[welbike]

Hi Bill,

Not a problem! Bart Vanderveen gave me many factory pictures, and the parts list, and have found much stuff the last 14 years since I have owned the truck, have a comparison test between the 704S, Dodge and GMC trucks, done by the french army in '39 or early '40, don't know where they got the time to do it!!! this is a bad copy, in french, have to retype it one day.

For starters I have a PDF file of an article I wrote at the beginning of this year for the norwegian magazine "Mud and Snow" I did not write the captions! it's too big here to download, email me on welbike(at)welbike.net and I'll email it to anyone interested.

Here's some more B/W ones:










Have also an IWM picture of the White Ruxtall tanktransporter, and much more, will have to scan a lot of pictures still.

Cheers,

Lex Schmidt

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I have one photo taken around November 1941 of GMCs awaiting repairs by GM Limited at Bamber Bridge near Preston, including an ex-Searchlight crewcab COE. There are also photos of ex-French GMCs after demob and refurb in our new book.

I also have, I remember now, a photo of a newly-assembled Chevrolet YR Houlder-Thornton 6x4 around April 1941 that is ex-French. That may appear ina future book.