ID needed for US vehicle and unit in Holland, 1945

[motto]

They look to me to be 20" wheels. The bumper is also the heavy truck type as used on military/government contract vehicles.
The cab has a join above the windscreen which to me means that the manufacturer supplied the vehicle with front end sheet metal finishing at that point. The body work aft of the join would have quite possibly been built 'in theatre'.
What appears to be 'a heavy piece of chrome bar going across the top of the grill' is simply light reflection off wet body work. The front end is standard for the 1-1/2 ton truck.

David

[motto]

Not specific to this vehicle but rereading this thread i remembered a comment made to me by a fellow I met many years ago.

I had been driving past a Lend/Lease Chev in a factory yard on my way to and from my job for quite a while when I noticed it standing over to one side with the body gone. I went in and enquired and sure enough the truck was at the end of its life and was to be disposed of. I purchased it for the scrap price and when I went to pick it up one of the workmen came over to me and said, 'Be kind to that old truck. I was in Holland right through the war and the first Allied vehicle I saw was one of those.'
You never know what memories or connections these old vehicles are likely to bring out.

David

[Alex van de Wetering]

I saved this picture from the web some time ago, but now I can't remember where I found it. I think it came from one of the many albums on the WW2radio facebook page.

Alex

[motto]

The truck backed up to the aircraft definitely came from the same stable as the one pictured in post #4 lower but they don't appear to have the join line above the windscreen as is so obvious in the post #1 photo.
The aircraft is a C87 Liberator Express the not so well known cargo version of the B24 Liberator bomber.

David

[David Dunlop]

Hanno.

What are the odds the truck in the two town photos posted is one and the same truck?

In the second photo, the gentleman looks to be waving a helmet, and wearing gloves. In the first photo, the gentleman on the left is wearing gloves and has a helmet.

Whatever this American unit was doing in Holland at that point in time, it would be highly unlikely that organization would have sent a bunch of teams to Holland to do the work. How do these two towns lay out on a map of Holland? Is there a main road, direct connection between them, or would one have to drive about a bit to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’?

Would this American unit have had free access to move about Holland at that time, or would they have had to coordinate access with appropriate Canadian authorities, becoming embedded or attached to some Canadian unit?

Perhaps, the two towns noted line up in some way with the general flow of the liberation of Holland and this truck and it’s crew were following along. If so, they might have also been photographed in other towns ahead of, and behind these two.

Haven’t a clue what the OWI did, but if the information they were gathering related to what the German forces had been up to in Holland during the war, then what would have been significant about the two towns noted, to attract OWI attention. Then again, the crew might just have been sight seeing. I hear Holland is pretty at that time of year.

One last thing. The first photo shows a plate above the bumper on the left side with what appears to be ‘U.S.A.’ on top and maybe a number below. Can that number be read with a higher res image and help ID the vehicle? It is there on the second photo but not at a useful angle or distance.

For better or worse, Hanno, that’s all I can come up with at the moment.

Cheers,

David

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Hello David,

Thanks for your input and apologies for my late response. You could well be right in this being the same vehicle. Zeist and Dordrecht are some 65 kms apart, Zeist was liberated on 7 May and Dordrecht on 8 May.

To be sure I'd have to look into the routes the Allied units followed to liberate the Western part of Holland. This was done after the German Army surrendered, so it was more a case of driving into territory occupied by an army which had laid down its weapons to reinstate Dutch government control. That said, there were skirmishes with German troops who did not want to surrender and both soldiers and civilians were killed in these engagements.

I have found a better photo of the Chevrolet woody at Dordrecht:

prints_3_2_552_326239(1).jpg
Source: http://beeldbank.regionaalarchiefdor...496/showbrowse