The Case of the Missing Really Big Truck

Several weeks ago, my boss handed me an assignment to investigate a missing HEMTT -- a very large vehicle that a Captain in our unit was responsible for. It seems that the poor company commander had a habit of losing accountability of equipment in his unit, and this particular item was one that had been discovered missing here while the Captain and his unit were deployed to Iraq.

So for days I tromped around all of my post's motor pools, checking serial numbers on EVERY flippin' HEMTT I could find. I even asked a few of the fine, properly compensated civilians at the Directorate of Logistics (DOL) -- knowing that several of this Captain's vehicles had passed through their hands to other stateside military installations -- but they all told me they had no record of it. Alas, two weeks of searching produced nothing so I wrapped up my investigation and recommended charging said Captain with about $5,500 for simple negligence -- the maximum I could even though the price tag of the lost truck was over $160,000.

But no one just loses such a big truck. Short of dredging all the nearby lakes, I figured someone simply shipped the thing off to Afghanistan and lost the shipping documents (which, I learned, are not automated here).

As it happened, the day the Captain sent his rebuttal to my recommendation -- basically whining that he was too busy around the time the truck was lost -- someone from DOL called up to inform us that the vehicle was indeed in their lot as it had been since October 2006, after having new bumper numbers painted on it. I set out to inspect, and there it was in a back corner of the motor pool, just as spiffy as if it had come off the showroom floor despite three years of supposedly sitting in the elements. DOL's sheepish excuse was that they were so busy they just forgot about it all this time. Although I smelled a rat, our commander was ecstatic that the truck was actually located and ordered the investigation closed.

So today I sent a simple email to the Captain with pictures of the truck and a short note: Happy Thanksgiving, you now owe me beer.