He Was Supposed to Fly Home — Then a Lieutenant Colonel Took His Seat on the Plane
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In the military, rank matters. While I’ve never been in the military, my understanding is that if someone is a higher rank, what they say is what you must follow, and it doesn’t matter what someone of a lower rank says.
But that’s not always true.
In this story, one Army lieutenant is supposed to fly home from a training facility, but a lieutenant colonel decides to fly home, leaving the lieutenant without a seat on the plane.
While he had to back down and stay at the training facility a couple extra days until a plane could take him home, the lieutenant colonel didn’t exactly get away with it.
Keep reading for all the details.
Take my flight home, I’ll take your money
Me: Me DFO: Dumb Freaking Officer (Lieutenant Colonel)
As a new lieutenant in the Army a few years back, I was tasked to be an guest observer (evaluator) at the National Training Center in California.
Basically it’s a large desert with small towns for military units to train in before deploying.
He was ready to go home.
On day 29 once all evaluations were complete, I was set to fly back to Texas and return to my unit.
In the observer/controller barracks, I was approached by a Colonel, DFO.
DFO: LT Bux, I am taking your place on the flight back to Fort XXXX.
Me: sir, you’re part of the training unit, all of the observers are leaving on this flight and my bags have already been sent to the airfield. I don’t have any changes of clothes.
This seems unfair.
DFO: You’ll be okay for a few days, Officers must innovate to be successful.
And innovate I did.
When I returned to my post, I was unable to locate my gear, including body armor, computer, cold weather gear and other like items due to the fact that they flew in two days before me on the flight I was kicked off.
I informed my command and they initiated an inquiry called a FLIPL (Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss) in which an investigator is required to determine the reason for lost government property.
Let’s see what the investigator decided.
The investigating officer determined that I was not at fault and that DFO abused his authority to return home earlier.
Additionally, since I was left at the training center for over thirty days, I was due additional pay for being away for over a month which amounted to over 1000 dollars.
DFO was found liable for over 7k worth of my equipment and had to pay for; which I subsequently found and turned into the central issue facility. I was reissued a new set of kit.
I bought myself a nice chair and put the rest into my TSP (government equivalent of a 401k) with the extra temporary duty (TDY) money, and jerk face got reduced to a staff job.
It definitely worked out well for OP in the end; although, I’m sure it was pretty frustrating at the time.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
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This person has a question.
Another person seems pleasantly surprised.
This person likes the brevity of the story.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employer who has an unexpectedly hard time retrieving a company vehicle from a fired employee.
Another person loves military revenge.
That was a very satisfying ending to the story! It would be super annoying to have all your gear packed and then to have a higher ranking officer tell you that you actually can’t fly home that day.
I’m glad he didn’t just let it go. The investigator made the right decision.
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