England is a nation full of history, ancient and modern. There is surely not a town or village in the land which doesn’t have hundreds of interesting stories to tell. Derek Englefield knows at least a dozen good ones, all from a life spent around the independent garages of Aldermaston, Tadley and other villages in those few square miles around the Hampshire and Berkshire border. It was through his local connections that Derek came to know this extremely rare 1940 Chevrolet 1½-ton recovery lorry, now looked after by his good friend Robert Townshend. Despite knowing it for most of his life, he was unable to prevent it from falling into dereliction but, with lots of persistence and a bit of persuasion, he was eventually able to rescue and restore it.
There was a time when recovery lorries built on old American truck chassis were not an unusual sight, many of them being leftovers from the war which had been adapted for civilian purposes. The Chevrolet was no exception. One of many originally built as army ambulances on the 1½-ton, 4x2 chassis, it did its wartime service at the US Air Force base on Greenham
