What are your biggest "Lieutenant mistakes" that you made as a Lieutenant?

It was the middle of the night at FOB Kalsu and we were loading up for another convoy escort mission. Having been on the road for several days already and dead tired, I somehow lost my soft cap. To this day I don't know where it went. The only thing I can come up with is that when I put my body armor on I left it sitting on the truck somewhere. I felt pretty damn stupid walking around with my ACH on when we got to the next FOB. Thankfully I only had to walk from the motorpool to the CHUs.

I hope I'm not committing an unpardonable faux pas by telling another lieutenant's story, but it's funny, so here goes.

My unit got a day at the grenade range on Camp Lejeune in the late 1990's. Perhaps about 20% of us actually got to throw a grenade that day. I was still practicing with dummy grenades when we were all told to go back to the unit.

You know how they stress safety at these things, right? Well, a young lieutenant couldn't help himself, and he poked his head over the berm to watch someone thrown a grenade. He caught a small piece of shrapnel in his neck -- not enough to actually injure him, but enough to draw blood and be noticed. Unfortunately for everyone else, he was the range safety officer, so we lost our safety officer, our medic, and our ambulance, all in one motion. Range closed.

For a couple of days after that, he had a bandaid over his adam's apple. I was SOOOOOOO tempted to ask him if he cut himself shaving, but I chickened out.

At a Wing Leaders call, I $h!t you not the you 2Lt said "in my experience" to the gazes of ever SNCO and officers Capt and above looking in disbelief that the you Lt actually said it and in a serious manner.

So that saying, "listen to and trust your NCO's?" That is true just as much as you should listen to and trust your fellow peer officers. There are good and bad apples in each group and I learned very quickly that there is an even better saying to live by: "trust but verify." That goes for enlisted, NCO's, officers, and civilians. One of my first experiences as an officer included NCO's lying about what training was completed, and then my PSG and myself looking like fools when the same "trained" enlisted Soldiers looked dumbfounded when we went to demonstrate that training in front of higher. Obviously it did not go over well for the leadership but it was a needed learning experience.

As a 2LT in a CPT position (SQDN S1), I made plenty of mistakes, but the one I repeated most was tasking people to provide information without going through the S-3 shop. Our XO, MAJ Matthew Savoie, a great mentor, finally threatened to remove a certain portion of my anatomy if I did it again. I got the point and changed my ways quickly.

Can an enlisted guy report one he witnessed?

It's 0600 hours, all roads on the map go either N-S or E-W... no variation on that. The sun is BLASTING us in the eyes. The Infantry LT made me get out of the jeep (yeah, it was a while ago...) to shoot an azimuth to ensure we were heading East.

"Sir... it's dawn... the roads go straight... the sun's in our eyes... can't you figure it out?"

I damned near made E-4 on that field problem... and I went out as an E-5!!!

Only two that I'll post!!!

During our medical indoctrination I stopped in the middle of a run to have a cigarette , DI slowly walked over came nose to nose "What the hell you doing Brooklyn?" My response was "Out of breath from running needed a cigarette break"! I was the token, 'let's ask Brooklyn what she would do" for the remainder of the training.

Next, checking into a hotel for a military conference, gave the Bell Captain $5.00 to take luggage to my room, I come off the elevator, see him standing outside my room door & said 'it's ok, you can open the door", he said they don't give Admirals room keys for AF LT's! Fortunately he was a super guy and each time I ran into him at the conference he introduced me to who ever he was with & proceeded to explain how we met...did my best to hide from him!

While working in the State Logistics Office, I packed up a bunch of handouts and reports to drive to a training site to help set up for a day of classes. Twenty minutes into my hour long drive, I receive a call to go back to the office and pickup another box of 'stuff' one of the other officers left behind.

How I exceeded the posted speed limit in the little green K car, I will never know. I made it to the class before the start time proud of my efforts. Only to have my Colonel pull me to the side and remind me that while operating a government vehicle, I was not to bring discredit to the military. I had passed him on the way at a 'high' rate of speed. Lesson learned.

My arrogance resulted in the deaths of two of my NCOs in Pakistan. I was too overzealous and in a hurry to conduct a mission supporting the opening of a girls school. I failed to properly review all of the threats and disregarded inputs on avenues of approach. We got nailed by a massive VBIED.

I'm guessing "Ensign Mistakes" count as well? Shortly after reporting to the TRAWING, I was walking to the VT offices (and not wearing my eye glasses-trying to look "cool" and avoid the SNFO ridicule) and saw an obviously senior person in khaki approaching from about ten paces away. All I could see was gold shinning on their collar and at six paces, rendered my best hand salute for the "lieutenant commander" I thought I was passing...the Chief was gracious enough to return the salute before saying, "Thank you...sir" with a knowing smile. I about wet my pants as I tried to make my apologies. He pulled me aside and suggested I look at the cover first...If I didn't see a device on both sides, stow the salute, and simply greet the NCO and hope I had enough sense to make out a Master Chief if I was unlucky enough to cross one.