Sorry this is so disjointed, typing through a migraine.

Back in the 80's we had a real life deployment to Chad with our ATH (Air Transportable Hospital). Three weeks and over 500 babies (the head of hospital services said the pregnant ladies started lining up as soon as they started unloading the GP medium tents and he might have exaggerated the total a bit) later, they get all packed up and come home.

Some background, there are a few of the larger pieces of equipment that do not ship with the rest of the ATH. The water buffalo for potable water was one of them. So, after the last pallet was unloaded and all the equipment off loaded, our supply NCO went over to do the post deployment inventory. All good, except for the water buffalo. He then went to all the other units to see if it had "migrated" over to them (you know how that happens). No buffalo to be found.

So up the chain of command it went. Luckily/unluckily, depending on where you sat, our command chain ended across base (regional hospital on a headquarters base), so it didn't take long for the TAC SG group to take control. Where we had been planning on sending our Mobility Officer (Major) and the supply NCOIC (MSgt), they decided that they needed to send a light colonel, a couple senior captains, a chief master sergeant, along with a tech sergeant and senior airman as flunkeys off to Cairo West to investigate where this water buffalo was.

There is no US military base at Cairo West, so of course the whole group was set up in one of the luxury hotels in Cairo proper for two weeks. Two weeks that it took them to find out that one of the local Bedouin tribes had acquired it and weren't about to give it back. I didn't call them on it, but you know that 90% of the investigation was probably done by the local military and police, while our guys were sitting by the pool sucking down drinks.

So home they come, without the water buffalo, and proceed to charge all of their expenses to our ATH account. $30,000 worth of expenses. We had to ask for additional funding to cover that (same building, different office), but we didn't have to buy a new water buffalo. Seems another base had just gotten a new one for their ATH and HQ decided that we needed it more. So we got Cannon's shiny new water buffalo and they got stuck buying ANOTHER new one.