Well, this pic is apparently dated 08 Jun 44... so the Luftwaffe was very definitely in business at the time!
I'll let part of Richard's email speak on the subject pic. BTW, they found this in search of archival material ref Dave Ballard's magnificent Polsten Ford:
Photo comes from page 139 of THE ARMED FORCES OF CANADA 1867-1967 by Goodspeed.
Publ. 1967.
Quote:
As you might imagine we have spent hours over this photo with a strong glass,
however, it is a pixelated print and we cannot find the original which would
reveal more data. We have contacted the Canadian museum and archive sources but
they will not search their data, although we could if we made an appointment and
came over. I do get the impression that the whole WWII Canadian records are
fragmented between several organisations and stored, unindexed, in several dark
basements; therefore people asking to do research are a pain in the arse.
You can see drivers bent down in the passenger door and that awkward engine
cover on the sand, we think they are de-wading the trucks before moving inland.
This would appear to be Juno Beach on the 8th of June 1944, so they did go over
even though most sources say otherwise.
The markings are readily deducible from the picture and Dave has faithfully
reproduced these. The shield and sword carried on the LHS ammo locker is 2nd
Army. Then we have the stag's head for 22nd Armoured Brigade and the horizontal
red/blue of 7th Armoured Division. Over that in a rare bit of dual marking is
the "73" of the 15th Light Ack-Ack regiment within 7th Armoured.
Of course these units were ex Monty's Desert Rats so this is carried also and
you can see that space is sorely limited on this type of truck to paint all this
on but we have achieved it as per the photo.
What is still puzzling but we have made an informed guess is that white square.
We think this was the shipping data, a standard stencil applied to everything
that allowed the dimensions and weight to be chalked-up in a standardised table,
these are to be seen in detail everywhere and easily duplicated. This we have
made a stencil for and applied to the battery box, since door space with the Z
number and Canadian transfer is limited, rather than chalking the actual data
Dave has painted it free-hand as a more durable representation of the chalked
data.
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