Interesting Article From October 1945 "Yank" Magazine Mentions The Garand [Archive]

Art

06-06-2015, 05:34

Boy is he right about the trucks! Probably our greatest contribution, as Marshall says, to our allies was vehicles. After the war the Brits had a lot of unused or barely used lend-lease materials, primarily vehicles that they asked if they could buy. Seeing the chance to recoup some of the investment we sold them to the Brits for 10 cents on the dollar on a 50 year loan at a very favorable interest rate. The Brit economy after the war wasn't always the best and they got a couple of extensions on the note so didn't pay of the entire loan (it was several billion dollars) until early in this century. There was a big ceremony in London when they did. The Soviets, of course, didn't even consider such an idea.

When I was in the Army one of the things I was impressed with was the trucks. The M35 2 1/2 ton truck was a fine vehicle that served the U.S. and many other countries until fairly recently and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it is still in service with some U.S. units today. I was not a truck driver but my MOS required me to drive trucks, usually the 2 1/2 ton M109 shop van (an M35 derivative,) on a regular basis. They were of course different models than the WW II versions but were built on the same principles, 6x6 cargo trucks with 10 speed transmissions, fine vehicles that gave relatively few problems, even on the incredibly rugged roads in Korea. We used to joke that a 2 1/2 ton 6x6 could climb a tree in low range. One minor shortcoming was the motor mount system. After a trip of any distance in Korea in the 1960s the operator had to tighten the motor mount bolts or they could come loose causing the engine to crash down on the frame. The engine of the 1960s 2 1/2 ton trucks was a thing of beauty, a license buil7 178 CID multifuel Diesel engine developed by Mann in Germany. Diesel was the preferred fuel but it would run on nearly anything that would burn though not as efficiently. Once when through poor planning we ran low on fuel we hit on some Koreans for gasoline, they gave us some "white gas" which was probably Coleman fuel. We dumped in a few gallons of that and it got us home though you could definitely tell the difference in performance!

Looking back I think I was more impressed with U.S. military vehicles than anything else I used on a regular basis during my time in the Army.

One P.S. since this is a Garand forum, first, notice Marshall called the rifle the Garand, my old daddy also called it the Garand, so much for the idea that I hear every now and again that WWII users didn't call it the Garand. That aside, the M1 weapon gave the American soldier in WWII something that all soldiers would like but few ever get; not just a difference in degree over their enemies but a difference in kind. The M1 was as superior to a Mauser or an Enfield as those rifles were to a Martini Henry or a Remington Rolling Block. It also fit perfectly into the American doctrine that at the squad to the company level in the infantry that automatic weapons supported the rifleman.