NEWS RELEASE
FRIENDS OF THE BORDEN MEMORIAL MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES
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The Friends of the Borden Memorial Museum and Archives, with a generous financial donation from the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps Association and working closely with the Base Borden Military Museum, has arranged the donation and transport of a wartime Canadian Military Pattern (CMP) Ford F60S three-ton truck from military vehicle collector and historian John Marchant in Milton Keynes, England.
John purchased several surplus Canadian Army vehicles in 1947 for use on his farm and with his contracting business. Since the early 1970s, he has been preserving and restoring his ex-wartime military vehicles; in the 1980s and 1990s, he regularly drove them to Europe for commemorations.
Canadian factories produced some 850,000 vehicles during the Second World War. This included some 50,000 armoured vehicles, self-propelled guns, and tanks. Still, the greatest significance is given to the vast majority of over 800,000 trucks and light-wheeled vehicles manufactured by Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler of Canada. This was no small feat, as, in 1939, the Canadian Army was still using horses and only just beginning to mechanize prior to the outbreak of war in Europe.
CMP trucks would eventually see service worldwide, from the North African Campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily, the Italian Campaign, the Eastern Front, the Burma campaign, and the liberation of Northwest Europe to the Western Allied advance into Germany. Their worldwide distribution meant that CMPs could be spotted in conflicts in Indonesia, French Indochina, and the Portuguese colonies in Africa. They were still in service with some NATO countries like Denmark and The Netherlands until the mid-1970s.
The Ford F60S three-ton General Service truck donated by John Marchant is a veteran of the Second World War, having served in North-West Europe in a Royal Canadian Army Service Corps 2nd Canadian Infantry Division Transport Company. The post-war disposal programme makes surviving wartime vehicles attributed to an actual Canadian unit exceedingly rare. The Friends of the Borden Memorial Museum and Archives is fortunate to own a running example that it plans to use to promote the Base Borden Military Museum.
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