Diane Marie
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2015
- Messages
- 54
- Location
- United States
- Occupation
- Retired counselor, now running around taking photo
Greetings, gentlemen! :waving It's been ages, but I'm still finding old rusty stuff. Here are three on a farm near Tulelake, CA. A very nice Chevy and an International, but the treasure, for me, is the early 1940s Studebaker US-6 in front. That one has some serious skeletons in its closet. Thousands of them were shipped to the USSR during WWII as part of our Lend-Lease agreement with them. Many of them were put to use by Stalin to help transport his millions of "enemies of the people" from prisoner trains to the sites of Gulag camps throughout the USSR. Once there, prisoners starved, froze or were worked to death within months. (Enough survived to tell the tale and to write books about their experience in Hell.) The worst of the Gulags were in the Russian Far East, location of gold and uranium mines. A few of these US-6s stayed behind in the US, and the one below was probably bought at a military surplus auction.
Over the last couple of years I've read several books on the history of the USSR, the Gulags and the Lend-Lease program. When I saw this, my first thought was, "military." It wasn't until a photography friend ID'd it that I learned what these trucks had been up to. There are still lots of them in use in the hinterlands of Russia. In fact, I recently saw one on Google Street View, parked behind someone's shanty in a small town in eastern Russia. It really did give me a chill. So...that's my Studebaker US-6 story.
Studebaker US-6 and the Lend-Lease Act: http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=703
Over the last couple of years I've read several books on the history of the USSR, the Gulags and the Lend-Lease program. When I saw this, my first thought was, "military." It wasn't until a photography friend ID'd it that I learned what these trucks had been up to. There are still lots of them in use in the hinterlands of Russia. In fact, I recently saw one on Google Street View, parked behind someone's shanty in a small town in eastern Russia. It really did give me a chill. So...that's my Studebaker US-6 story.
Studebaker US-6 and the Lend-Lease Act: http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=703
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