In the military, when you PCS (permanent change of station) you carry a couple of suitcases on the plane, but you also get something called Hold Baggage which is 600lbs, in which you put everything you will really need right away, that comes very fast to your new duty location. Like all your extra uniforms, boots, shoes, raingear, coats, camp-out-in-your-new-empty-house/apartment gear, etc. And then your household goods which are shipped in a big wooden crate which takes a month or two to arrive, depending on just how bumfok-remote the funny guys in military assignments have decided to send you. And you may or may not get to ship a car as well.
So I get assigned (volunteer, uh oh) to go from Maxwell AFB AL to Ankara AS, Turkey (a 'fer piece). So I take a lot of time to put
everything I will really need in my hold baggage, and ship it before I spend about 24 continuous hours in various airplanes to arrive in Ankara Turkey. They put me in temporary housing until I can find a local apartment on the economy because there is no base housing (except for E3 and below, and guys who have gotten in so much trouble downtown (like drunk driving, fighting or deflowering the local maidens), they are ordered into base housing).
And my Hold Baggage with everything I will need right away, never arrives and cannot be located. When it does finally arrive, the cardboard boxes look like they have traveled to Mars or maybe been stored under the Great Pyramids. The mystery is solved when I find rubber stamps on the cartons indicating they were sent to Kunsan AB Korea (and just stuck somewhere for a long time). Now Ankara Turkey and Kunsan Korea are both petty bumfok, but you'll notice how one could not reasonably be mistaken for the other. In the meantime I camped out in an empty apartment with no pots and pans or bedding and two uniforms and pairs of sox and underwear (until I had to buy more) for a long time.
I always figured I had pissed someone off pretty bad, but who, I never knew. My big wooden crate of household goods and car went in the bottom of an ocean going freighter out of New Orleans LA and arrived before my Hold Baggage.
