Driving it a year without them must have been interesting. Black out on and no heat. How often did the batteries need charged? Cold starts and the injection pump would chew thru some CCA real quick. Curious.
In reality it was more like four or five years, but it wasn't exactly a daily driver and used only in the neighborhood. Got that 1008 with one alternator missing, so I disconnected the wiring for the other one.
Used a solar panel to keep the batteries charged, one at a time, and since it was in SoCal there was no need for a heater. Very rarely used it after dark, making lighting a non-issue as well.
It wasn't until it was converted to a dump bed (electric over hydraulic) that the charging became more important. Eventually I installed the left-over alternator from my M1009's 12-Volt conversion (yeah I know, wrong side, but it worked) as I'd moved to a much cooler climate, used it a lot more often, and needed it to jump start other 24 Volt vehicles.
Now the dump bed is gone, as is the bed, and it's mostly used as a tug.
Anyway, had it been missing both alternators, I would've bought shorter belts to keep the water pump and power steering working. Sometimes life can be quite simple, if you let it.