I'm getting pretty sick of troops having their gear, issued or

bought, stolenconfiscated.
As he was stranded at another major base on his way out, he heard that Navy Customs in Kuwait was taking all auto-opening knives, even those we'd been issued on previous tours (as opposed to any we may have purchased at AAFES locations this tour).

Rumor has it, this can be memoed away. However...none of our people know the specifics of such a memo. Company level, battalion level, brigade...it's a mystery. As we all know, standing in the Customs warehouse and being told you should have gotten a memo from the first O6 in your chain of command is not exactly useful.

Remember that moron officer in a cavalry unit several years ago who decreed that nobody in the unit could carry even a pocketknife? Or a multi-tool with a knife blade? In friggin' Iraq, for deity's sake? As I recall, it took a large amount of ridicule and some higher-ups asking what the hell do you think you're doing? to get that fixed.

Also a few years back, someone wrote of a new LT arriving in Iraq and, first thing after getting to the FOB, asking where was the armory so his men could store their weapons? No, not just the MGs and such, the rifles and sidearms? When somebody asked him if his men were so badly trained and untrustworthy they couldn't be allowed to carry them, he got kind of flustered; seems he'd been the recipient of some of the 'enlisted men cannot be trusted with complicated things like weapons and they should be locked up' bullshit and bought it.

You can find morons and busybodies and nannies effing everywhere.