I don't recall the conversation I had with Bruce - and I am unusually pressed for time this morning. However, looking at the pix above. The mud hole where the guys are stuck is just that - a mud hole. The army would drive around it, or fill it. Trying to blast through it is for boys playing with toys - not for transporting men and material to the other side. Were the ENTIRE AREA in conditions like the mud hole, then I'd call it a swamp, and the army likely would use more specialized equipment, depending on the era, a Weasel, Otter, SUSV, etc - or a GOER - the former being vehicles that would tend to float on top of the mud, the later tending to push through the mud.
The deuce is intended to transport 2 1/2 tons over most conditions world wide with out significant modification. From arctic to desert, paved road to mud. Toward that end it is a series of compromises - with one of the compromising factors being cost. The video Bjorn mentions - and others taken at APG show tactical vehicles being tested, and compared to each other, and exposing their vulnerabilities in mobility. Its been a number of years since I watched this, but IIRC, the M35A2 did not perform off-road as well as the Gama Goat, for example, IIRC, but did perform better than the M151. A GOER will drive places a deuce won't - the deuce will run off and leave the GOER on what we (hobbyists) consider a road. (Keep in mind that what the army considers a road, we would consider an off-road trail. "Off-road" to the army tends to mean 'turn here and drive through that field/swamp/forest/river' - "on road" tends to mean 'follow those wagon tracks'.) Hence, amongst the army's tactical vehcle fleet, the deuce until recently has been about average in off-road performance.
HTH,
David Doyle