I always enjoy Clell Ballard’s articles and the Un-Identical Twins (Farm Collector, May 2014) gave me a real lift. And then that picture — a man standing in front of a rare army truck — caught my eye. Seen that picture before. No, surely not; couldn’t have. Dug a little anyway and sure enough, here it is. Almost surely the same IHC model, only this one appears to be four-wheel drive.
In September 1945, the 260th Signal Corps heavy construction company went to Tokyo to build telephone lines and the like. I was a mechanic in that outfit. We had seven or eight kinds and models of trucks to keep up but this one wasn’t one of them. In the photo, the man on the left was our motor sergeant, Rodney Fuller. On the right was a friend of his who came by to visit him, driving that truck. He was from a quartermaster outfit. Never saw that truck again, and fifth wheel tractors were quite rare in that area, most hauling being done with 6x6s.
One more thing. As Ballard noted, there were very few military trucks at that time rated over 5 tons. We had one, a 6×6 Ward LaFrance wrecker. Arthur Coy poses with it in the other photo. Rated 10 tons. Now, does that qualify to make the twins triplets? Or maybe cousins?
Bob Good, Harrison, Arkansas
