u/bikerJedi's latest story of the E4 mafia reminded me that old habits are hard to break, even once you make E5 / E6...

My unit had a requirement of NCOs accompanying any vehicle moving around the FOB. So, unlike 3rd ACR, nothing eeeeeever got stolen in my unit, because an E4 couldn't just grab an E2 and go get a 5 ton and drive off somewhere…

<derisive snort> Yeah, ok. Riiiiiiiiight.

On one of my deployments, we were a brigade replacing a battalion that had basically gone full turtle in the face of daily insurgency attacks. They had no control over the city, or even most of the base. Naturally, this meant that our initial living conditions were...somewhat less than satisfactory.

Fortunately, everyone's favorite supplier of charitable donations to the cause (aka, the Air Force) shared the base. Huzzah! And they had a Class 4 yard!

A side note - in addition to the E4 mafia, there's one support element (or several) on every base that is generally pretty good at scrounging and/or fabricating anything needed. That would be maintenance. Maintenance usually has access to literally everything, whether it needs to be ordered, moved, delivered, built, etc. This is important for a few reasons.

1. The "master key" aka bolt cutters (though more than a couple of us picked up lockpicking as a hobby out of boredom...and there was at least one time when the bolt cutters were locked in a conex that our resident genius lost the keys to, so we couldn't get into anything, and I was able to pick the lock and get the cutters while everyone else took a strategic lunch break...but that's a whole other story).
2. Heavy lift equipment
3. Transportation equipment

So, with the help of a 10k Skytrak forklift, a flatbed LMTV, and a flatbed PLS, I went about improving my foxhole.

At the start, my foxhole consisted of a rotted, busted up, dirty, dusty, dank, smelly GP medium with those cheap Iraqi beds that fell apart if you sneezed on them. Also, they were bunk beds, and at least a couple times they collapsed onto whoever was on the lower bunk when the top bunk person got in. Hazardous for no fucking reason, in other words. Universally disliked, but hey, we were an element of a few thousand coming in to replace a few hundred, so we were told to suck it up or "deal with it" until CHUs could be ordered and built.

The first thing I grabbed was Hesco barriers, with direction from and permission of my chain of command. It didn't occur to me at the time that the Air Force still...you know...wanted to maintain some semblance of an accurate inventory, but hey, their fault for leaving the gate unlocked. I went and grabbed a few pallets of Hescos, we drove back, spent the next few days filling them all around the tents.

With my initial success under my belt and a pattern forming, I got basically blanket permission from my 1SG to make further improvements. I should note that he was new to the unit, didn't know me or any of the other mafia members (current or former), and had come from a unit where things like this simply didn't happen. It was apparently unfathomable that someone would take his casual "knock yourself out if you can find it" with any sort of authority or tacit acknowledgement of things to come.

The next thing to get built out was our welding shop (any of you who have played RTS games, you know you gotta get that production up ASAP). We had machines just sitting in conexes with nowhere to use them. Seeing as we still wanted to be somewhat cognizant of safety, fire and line of sight were concerns. Off we went to shop!

In the corner of a seemingly-abandoned-I-swear-I-didn't-just-wait-till-they-went-to-lunch hanger near the Class 4 yard, we found a few pallets of 4x8 sheets of kevlar armored wall, similar to this stuff. We also found some perfectly serviceable metal scraps of square tubing and angle iron, cement, a wheelbarrow to mix it in, and an auger attachment that I reckoned would likely fit a bobcat I'd spotted in another abandoned part of the base that I suspected a motivated team of mechanics could get running. In short order, we had a welding shop with fireproof walls, and set up a plasma cutter, welder, drill press, etc.

By this time my chain of command may have caught on that something was amiss that might come back to bite them in the ass later, so some discussions were had, but ultimately I pointed out they'd given permission and what was done was done - not my fault they didn't anticipate me innocently taking their sarcasm literally. It was some quality r/MilitiousCompliance material, really. Fortunately, they saw the humor and the possibilities, and about a month later we were told that one of the derelict, nasty, fucked up, former Iraqi military barracks buildings across the base was ours if we wanted it - but we'd have to clean it out and renovate it ourselves. Given that it was a solid cinder block building rather than the tents we were still living in (albeit with upgraded AC, barriers, and temporary workshops built in and fenced in around them) we agreed.

As it turned out, one of the mechanics was a former eagle scout and carpenter, so he got right to work on window frames, door frames, and AC unit frames courtesy of some cordless power tools that had been sadly neglected somewhere. They were joined by some much shinier newer less-neglected 36v DeWalt tools we salvaged from somewhere else. We officially ordered the AC units, sandbags, tile, and ikea-quality wall lockers and new bed frames, but I'd say at least half the building material for the door frames, 3 flights of stairs, plus all the concrete barriers erected around it, were tactically acquired during those first couple months. All total we renovated 2 of those old barracks buildings, a 3rd nearby building to use as a command center, a bunker (like, a legit Saddam bunker) for use as living quarters + command center for the brigade commander, and a smattering of other buildings to include building out the entire motor pool complete with new barriers, gates, supply yard, etc. With a significant portion being courtesy of the local Air Force unit's charitable donations. It didn't hurt that we were on a 12 month deployment and they were only on 3 month deployments, so plenty of opportunity to sow confusion...but the rest of the tour was much more comfortable and a lot safer, in our minds at least.