Tim Gosling is invited along to see an ex-army French truck that served in both world wars
It seems that for the potential restorer of a World War One vehicle the best place to find a candidate is still France. You are unlikely to find a British-built vehicle, but ones of American or French origin do have a habit of turning up.
‘The Air Service set about designing and building their own 30cwt truck’
At the end of the war the US Army disposed of their surplus equipment including many thousands of vehicles to the French army who, along with their own surplus, sold them off via auctions. Starved of new vehicles for five years they found eager buyers and had a secondhard life until being eventually scrapped or tucked away in barns and left to gather dust.
One barn find which was recently brought back to the UK was a remarkably original ex-French army 1917 Fiat 15 Ter which had almost been in the same family since its disposal by the army shortly after the end of the war in 1918.
I say almost, because the documents that came with it show that having been sold into private ownership at the end of World War One it was requisitioned back into French military service in September 1939. Unfortunately, we don’t kn…
