Naming my Deuce (Nam vets help needed)

[panzerjunky]

I see by a lot of your posts that you guys name your rigs I thought naming my guns was bad but I guess I will have to come up with one at least when I am cussing at it I can do it by name.


My question is During the Vietnam era ( gun trucks excluded) were names or slogans painted on Deuce's with any regularity like you would see on WWII armor ect. I tried to do a google search for Vietnam M35A2 and all I get is some info on painting plastic models. Any of you Nam vets remember seeing anything like that or have any pics or referances.

Thanks Jerry

 

[KaiserM109]

I think that it was a unit-to-unit thing. South of Saigon, or at least in the 9th Inf. Div., that was verboten because that helped the enemy identify specific vehicles. We called my M37 “Methuselah” because as far as we could tell by the numbers on the hood it was the oldest truck around; it was a ’50 model rebuilt in ’66. I had the name painted on it for about 23 hours. When the motor sgt. Saw it, it went away. We had a flame track named "Grandaddy Zippo" and there was a lot of history in that name, but the crew had to take the name off.

We had a duster (twin 40 mounted on a track) that flew the Stars and Bars and there was a big uproar about it because that identified the vehicle. The last I saw, the Confederate battle flag was still flying. I was told that they won their argument because they were the only duster in the area.

In late '68 when 2 color camo came into effect and white stars went away and numbers turned black, patterns for the camo were issued so that the vehicles all looked similar.

Here is a link about armored vehicles and you can see that they very clearly named each vehicle.

http://www.steelsoldiers.com/cadillac-gage-v100/28372-v-100-crew-member-vietnam-71-72-a.html

 

[ONTOS66]

Naming trucks was done on occasion, and varied by unit. In the Marines we did not name our vehicles nor add any idenfitying markings. Most of the standard unit markings were covered for OPSEC purposes.