84% in 1.5 days

The Army prescribes 30 days for a change of command inventory. I've been working on mine since mid-November, though the start was pushed back by two weeks for scheduling issues.

On Tuesday, my replacement and I went into a meeting to discuss where we were at, and -- to my surprise -- he wasn't ready. The property book officer had given him a more current printout of what property was in the company, and he hadn't finished reconciling it yet. The meeting was postponed until Wednesday.

By Wednesday's meeting, he had reconciled everything. Early in the morning, I'd asked if there were any other problems besides the one I knew about (quantity of gas mask), and he said no. OK, good; ready to go.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when he was asked if he'd seen everything, and he answered there was a whole bunch of stuff he hadn't seen. Like, 85 line items of stuff. I was shocked. This is the kind of thing you let someone know waaaaaay before a meeting.

But this wasn't a problem with him not seeing stuff -- he's been seeing stuff for six straight weeks. This was a problem with rotten record keeping, as evidenced by the fact that -- of the 85 line items -- two thirds were from the supply sergeant's hand receipt. If nothing else, he could have told the guy he's been walking around with for the past month and a half.

So there we were, two days before we have to brief the battalion commander, and we've got 85 lines of stuff to go back and see plus 200 gas masks to account for. What a kick in the teeth.

It's a good thing I've been taking care of my property. That evening, we "found" 44 of the "missing" items. Today, we took care of another 27, fixing 84 percent of the problems in a day and a half. There are only 14 more items to go -- an assortment of crusty, old, and broken monitors, printers, and computers that are destined for turn in anyway.

If I can find the rest by the middle of next week, the only thing I'll have to account for is accompanying parts (like wrenches that go with trucks). It's likely I'll be able to avoid an investigation.

But if not, I've been preparing my defense. My company and I have been through some crazy experiences in the past 18 months -- a company deactivation, a company activation, the 2015 Combined/Joint Logistics Over The Shore exercise, and several smaller field exercises. I may not have been able to accomplish all my supply goals, but I've had a number of setbacks that I hope can be acknowledged.

It would be nice to leave on time.