Southwest of Farmington was the largest agricultural project in northwestern New Mexico. The Navajo tribe owned the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry (NAPI) farms. There, the tribe grew enormous quantities of alfalfa hay, corn, pinto beans, pumpkins, potatoes, grains, barley, and onions. Close to sixty thousand acres were under cultivation in circular-irrigated fields when the Crunch hit. The majority of the water for NAPI came from Navajo Dam, about thirty-five miles away. The reservoir pushed back twenty miles. The project that got the water to NAPI included a huge tunnel that was completed in the mid-1960s.
Andrew Laine knew that it was horribly bad timing to have been named head of the three-man “Rear Party” for the Battalion. But as the Property Book Officer (PBO), he was the logical choice. The additional duty of PBO has always been dreaded by Army officers. There are very few brownie points to be earned and umpteen ways to mess up as a PBO, just for failing to pay very close attention to detail.
It had become standard practice to rotate troops and small arms but not vehicles whenever a unit left the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) theater of operations. The logistics of moving vehicles with each unit rotation were monumental, so lateral transfers of vehicles and heavy weapons made sense. This process also made a tremendous amount of work for supply NCOs and PBOs. While the rest of the unit rotated back to Germany, Andy, the battalion’s E-8 supply NCOIC, and a PLL clerk would stay behind to hand off both the containerized housing unit (CHU) billets and the many items designated for lateral transfer to the new battalion.
In the case of his unit, a Stryker battalion, a unit shuffle was a PBO’s nightmare. By his unit’s table of organization and equipment (TO&E), there were dozens of lateral transfers to accomplish, including the Stryker wheeled APCs, each with their complement of TOW missile launchers, 25mm chain guns, frequency-hopping VHF radios, thermal sights, and so forth. Each of these items had a unique serial number. There were also spare engines, generator trailers, tentage, camouflage nets, and the umpteen other “fiddly bits,” as Master Sergeant Rezendes called them.
Word had come down from the incoming unit commander that he wanted every serial number double-checked. After all, who could blame him? It was the PBO’s job, but it was the incoming commander’s responsibility. A $196 million property book was nothing to be trifled with, especially when the loss of just one sensitive item would be deemed “non-career-enhancing.” Ultimately, it would be the outgoing and incoming battalion commanders who would answer for any discrepancies. Everything had to be accounted for, right down to two radios that were currently off for depot-level repair.
Before the main party of the unit departed, Laine walked into his commander’s office, carrying the Electronic Property Book (EPB). Colonel Ed Olds looked up from his desk with his characteristic squint. Olds asked, “So, how are those laterals going?” Andy spent the next few minutes giving him the details. Colonel Olds leaned backed in his chair and probed, “Any unresolved discrepancies?”
“None yet, sir, but if I find anything, you’ll be the first to know. The good news is that if it is something minor, with all the IED incidents, we can easily write something off as a combat loss.”
Olds laughed and said, “Let me tell you a little story from my ancient history, Andy. I remember back in the early days of the Desert Shield deployment-this was months before the actual Desert Storm invasion-there was a UH-60 helicopter that went down in a sand storm. The crew got out okay but the aircraft burned up. Six months later, when the IG followed up on the accident report paperwork, they discovered that there was supposedly more than two thousand pounds of miscellaneous equipment on board that aircraft: radios, starlight scopes, an MWR television and VCR, two gen-sets, you name it. Everything but the kitchen sink. According to all the paperwork-with all the i’s properly dotted and the t’s crossed, mind you-there was gear from every company in the brigade on board that bird. If what was on that manifest was actually on board, there was no way that Blackhawk could have got off the ground. And in fact it wouldn’t have even fit in the available space.”
Olds laughed. “Every 76 Yankee in the brigade used that crash to make up for years’ worth of missing inventory items. Thankfully, the IG team kinda thought it was a bit of jest and gave it a wink and a nod. Fact is, there was a rather droll statement included in the after-action, somethin’ like ‘The aircraft’s high takeoff weight may have contributed to this incident.’”
Laine and Olds both laughed this time. Andy took a breath and then asked: “Sir, given the deteriorating security situation in our AO, I’d like permission for the rear party to keep our issued weapons with us, using hand receipts. We’ll be here at least a week and possibly a lot longer, depending on when we can find transport. We all know how irregular the MAC flights are getting.”
Colonel Olds bit his lower lip and asked, “Can we do that by regulation?”
“Yes, sir. I just researched it today. Paragraph 9 of AR 190-11 allows detachments to travel armed at the local commander’s discretion. And, of course, AR 190-14, chapters 2 and 4 apply.”
Olds rubbed his chin.
Laine added, “With your permission, sir, I’ll prepare hand receipts for each of us in the rear party.”
“Just don’t lose them, or it’ll be nearly as bad as losing the weapons themselves. That would be a major goat rope.”
“Understood. Tell you what, sir: just in case, I’ll make a backup copy of each hand receipt, also for your signature, and I’ll leave them in the TOC Crypto safe.”
“That would be prudent, Andrew. Make it so.”
Andy rolled his eyes as he walked out of the office. Colonel Olds was famous for that phrase best known from Star Trek. Behind his back, some of the junior officers jokingly called him “Colonel Picard.”
It was 90 degrees outside. As he walked back across the quadrangle, Andy wondered when the weather would change. The standing joke in his unit was that Afghanistan had 180 days of summer and 180 days of winter, leaving two days each year for fall and three days for spring.
Some things in the Army were still done the old-fashioned way, especially when units were deployed overseas. One time-honored tradition was preparing hand receipts on a 1980s-vintage ball-head Selectric typewriter that was still soldiering on. Just as he had been instructed, Andy typed two sets of DA Form 3749s for the three M4 carbines, carefully keying in the nomenclature and serial numbers. But he intentionally left off the standard ruler-drawn ballpoint pen line with “Nothing Follows,” something that is always added as the last step before getting signatures.
Just before close of business for the day, Andy took the six forms to Colonel Olds. “Two sets, as you directed, sir.” Olds nodded and signed them with hardly a glance or a word.
After the commander had left for the day, Laine returned to his desk and took just one of the pair of forms that was made out in his own name, put it in his typewriter, and added a line that read “Pistol, M11 Compact (SIG P228), 9mm” along with his newly purchased pistol’s serial number. Finally, he added the slashed “Nothing Follows” lines to all six forms. The subterfuge was that simple. Now Laine could carry home the SIG pistol with “official” paperwork, yet have a second set of paperwork to also make the pistol disappear.