Deuce

by Bob Buddemeier

Written with profound gratitude to Eleanor Lippman, whose essay “Corvette” was a striking evocation of the juxtaposition of relative youth and automotive power. She has inspired me to produce this very different, yet somehow similar, reminiscence.

Once upon a time, about when RVM was being founded, I was shipped as a recent graduate of the (then-named) Army Language School to my new duty station in Germany.  One of the first experiences was going through Army driving school – a brief introduction to various olive-drab vehicles one might be expected to operate.  It was there that I met the vehicle of many memories.  Don’t be misled by the title of this piece – it was not the “Little Deuce Coupe” of Beach Boys fame.

No, I’m talking about the deuce-and-a-half, the workhorse Army truck from the 50s into the 90s (longer if you count its WWII predecessors).  It got its name from its tactical load rating of 2.5 tons, but four word nicknames are conversationally awkward, so it was often abbreviated (“Wadda ya drivin’?”  “Deuce”).  It was an M35A2 6×6 (three axles, all with motive power, but if you counted the wheels, it was a 2x4x4).

Never mind what you call it, just shut up and drive. The city kids were pretty intimidated by it, but I had always been jealous of my older cousin who got to drive Grampa’s tractor, and I felt this strange affinity.

M35A2 Deuce-and-a-half

The Deuce was a pretty unforgiving beast, with mostly metal edges and angles and minimal padding, and a manual multigear transmission with a transfer case that smaller men had to shift by kicking.  It got 4 miles/per gallon, but made up for that with two ginormus fuel tanks.  The spec for top speed was 58 mph, but I think that must have been fully loaded because we repeatedly demonstrated that we could get at least the speedometer well above that.

So on with the story…  In those dear departed Cold War days, every Autumn the opposing armies would go out in the field for maneuvers.  And when the Soviets went out in the field they had to use radiotelephones instead of landlines.  This meant that our little band of eavesdroppers could listen in on what we hoped would be their deepest, darkest military secrets.

Since we were doing Secret Stuff, we got ready for our ventures by putting olive-drab duct tape over the unit markers on the vehicle bumpers, and taking the name tags off our uniforms.  I’m pretty sure that the 507^th ASA Gp (Army Security Agency = communications and electronic intelligence) was the only US Army unit in Europe that drove around in unmarked vehicles with anonymous drivers, so I’m not sure how successfully we deceived the opposition.  But “orders is orders.”

Then we drove north, to an area where the border zigged to the east, and spent about a week wearing headphones and hoping that the Soviet 3^rd Shock Army would stay on its own side of the border.  It always did, which is why one year I eventually turned onto the southbound Autobahn near Kassel, towing a generator trailer but otherwise unloaded, and with a copilot who had absolutely zero interest in sharing the driving.

After a while I noticed that we kept passing and repassing the same German tractor-trailer rig, loaded with cargo. Clearly the idea occurred to both drivers that this looked like a rather interesting and well-matched contest, and the race was on. There was no speed limit on the Autobahn, and it was constant give-and-take all the way to Heidelberg.  Running empty, we would always get ahead going uphill, but once he got to the crest gravity was on his side and he would overtake us again.

It was almost dark when we turned off on the river road along the Neckar from Heidelberg to Heilbronn, so it was impressive to see the shower of sparks that would fly when the wheel hubs scraped the stone walls along the road.  Then we got to Heilbronn, I turned off and returned to the barracks, and he went wherever German truckers go when the game ends.

No prizes, no fights, no accidents – just a tired, self-satisfied 21-year-old and a memorable machine headed home.

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