to carry passengers, especially during wartime. In both world wars, French boxcars known as forty-and-eights (40/8) were used as troop transports as well as for freight; in World War II first by the French forces, then the German, and finally the Allies. The shared experience among Allied soldiers spawned groups such as the Forty and Eight veterans organization. In addition to soldiers, the Germans transported prisoners in crowded boxcars during the Nazi regime, and an undisclosed number of German soldiers captured by the U.S. Army died of suffocation in American boxcars transporting them from the front-line to prisoner of war camps in March 1945. The same transportation was used by the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, when over 1.5 million people were transferred to Siberia and other areas from different countries and areas incorporated into the Soviet Union. The UK 'Van' Historically the open wagon was the most common type of vehicle used for general merchandise traffic in Britain, with covered wagons ('goods vans') being used for specific types of goods requiring greater protection. Most wagons were 'unfitted' (i.e. not equipped with continuous brakes), the exceptions being wagons used on express goods traffic. However, British Railways' fleet modernisation during the 1950s resulted in vans being used for a much higher proportion of merchandise traffic, and the fitting of vacuum brakes as standard. The typical British goods van of this period had a wheelbase and a payload of . The most common types were general purpose 'ventilated vans' such as Vanfits, but there were numerous more specialised types: Vanfits were ventilated vans which were built in very large numbers and used for almost any type of goods. Vanwides were an improved version of the Vanfit, built with wider doors for easier loading and unloading. Some of these eventually received air brakes and lasted into the early 1990s, by which time they were the last traditional short-wheelbase vans in regular traffic. Palvans were designed for palletised loads and loading by forklift truck. Whereas most vans had small doors centrally positioned on the van sides, Palvans had large doors half the width of the wagon on the left hand side of each side (i.e. diagonally opposite each other). Although palletisation was the future, these early Palvans were found to be very sensitive to unbalanced loads and prone to derailment at higher speeds. Shocvans and Palshocvans (a.k.a.Palvan Shocks) were the shock-absorbing equivalents