Sometimes, the best way to beat the system is to drown it in its own paperwork.

So, what would you do if your commanding officer refused to let you serve overseas, even though you were qualified and submitted all the appropriate paperwork? Would you give up and stay where they placed you? Or would you keep submitting the forms until they got accepted?

In the following story, one soldier finds himself in this predicament and chooses the latter. Here’s how it worked for him.

Won’t let your soldier overseas, enjoy the paperwork.

I heard this story from my great-grandad (I’ll call him Alan from now on, as that’s his name, and I don’t want to repeat great-grandad) when he was in the army back in the 60s.

Now, on one of the first days after everyone got settled in, the army had to assign where everyone was going. As in, to what part of the country each soldier was going to.

Before giving each one their assigned place, the Sergeant asked if anyone wanted to go overseas to serve, and out of the 20 people there, 4 put their hands up. The Sergeant explained what form to get and what to fill out to explain that they wanted to go overseas.

They had received the forms, but for some reason, Alan was not approved to go overseas.

Somehow, out of that 20, instead of 4 going overseas, 16 went, but Alan wasn’t one of them, so he went up to his commander to ask why he wasn’t going overseas despite him filling out the form.

The commander replied with something along the lines of Alan not being on the list to be overseas and trying to dismiss him (basically, translated from Army talk is “I don’t know and don’t care, now **** off”)

After hearing this, Alan was upset, so he went into the building that handles all the forms.

This time, he was called into his commander’s office.

Luckily, the receptionist knew Alan and was happy to see him, but when he learnt what happened with the overseas form, the receptionist gave him some valuable information that was, word for word, “It’s your given right to send as many forms as you like without getting written up.”

With this newfound knowledge, Alan grabbed a new form, filled it out, and sent it up the chain of command. When it came back to him, it read ‘DENIED,’ so Alan went back, filled out another form, and sent it up again.

After some time of the back and forth of filling out the forms and getting denied, he was called into the commander’s office. There, Alan was promptly chewed out for making all these forms despite them getting denied.

By this point, Alan was upset.

Alan was also in trouble because he had been wasting the commander’s time. These were forms that had to be properly viewed, so it took some time to overlook them.

Thus, it stopped him from going over ‘Important documents and files’, and the commander said that if one more form came onto his desk, Alan would be written up and (insert threat here that you’d expect from the army).

Upset, Alan walked out of the office.

He finally got his way.

Thinking about what he could do, he had a realisation that he couldn’t be written up for making these forms, as “It was his right to do so,” so he headed straight to the building to get the form, filled it out again, and set off.

The next day, he was called in again. A little nervous but determined, he went into the office, where he saw the commander, clearly unimpressed, upset, and angry.

He was holding up the form, saying, “If I accept this, will you stop sending all of these forms?”

Alan quickly replied yes, to which the commander slammed the stamp with a big green word ‘ACCEPT.’

Wow! That’s some persistence.

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit have to say about the commander’s actions.

This is an interesting question.

Here’s someone who did a similar thing to get sent overseas.

It’s always possible.

For this person, it sounds like a believable story.

You gotta do what you gotta do, and that’s just what Alan did.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.