My only interest in this saga is the lend-lease area. As I understand it, it wasn't a simple matter of lend-lease but............. Suffice it to say, many of the lend lease papers are still not open for public perusal by the Public Records Archives. I should imagine they are fully open in the US but not here. Clearly there was a lot of behind the scenes skulduggery and back scratching that showed that the US were backing us but being diplomatic about it. That's just my thoughts

I remember when the Army were disposing of their last Diamond T tank transporters and Half Tracks in the 70's. Those that were still in service in Germanyicon had to be brought back to the UK for disposal at great expense and a sort of compromise was worked out where they would be disposed of via the US Military disposal system in Baden Baden - still at great expense for what was virtually now scrap! There were strict conditions, believe me. Those disposed of in Englandicon had equally strict conditions of disposal and this, combined with the low value meant that they just didn't sell. The half tracks were bought up and went as spares (?) to the Israelis (against the conditions of sale I should add.....) and there was a bit of a stink but the diamont T's were just disposed of as scrap steel.

Logistically we couldn't do the same with S rifles so we just paid a pro-rata price