This long crazy story involves Government waste and this particular axe. I was in an Army unit scheduled for inactivation. We had turned in all our vehicle and equipment when Iraq invaded Kuwait. All of a sudden, we were the "most" needed unit for Desert Shield/Storm. We had no equipment and only had 20% of our required personnel, many of them pending discharge or medical separation boards. So, damn the cost, full speed ahead we started getting new equipment, tools, and people. I had two 30KW generators that needed Basic Issue Items (BII) basically sledge hammers, axes and a few other things. Just as I receive mine, I was called to attend special training prior to deployment. So I locked my BII in a trailer to keep it from "walking off". While I was gone, all our stuff including BII was painted with sand CARC paint. But not mine as it was locked in the trailer. So we deployed and basically sat for months waiting for our 10 minutes of glory. Upon return to the US, we were ordered to deactivate, so we turned in all our equipment and reassigned or discharged all our people. All our equipment went to Defense Reutilization (DRMO) for reuse or sale. DRMO had started cash sales one day a week. You could go in and buy most things for cash without the hassle of going through the auction process. I was excess awaiting another Army school, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I started going to DRMO on sale day and picking up a few items. About a month after we turned in our equipment, they had a bunch of sledge hammers and axes for $10 each. All were painted sand except this one axe (was it mine, maybe). So I bought it. It's marked US97 on the head and the hickory handle has the name of the handle company. I have used it a few times and it's basically still in new condition. Continuing this strange story, Congress stopped the inactivation of the unit and they started getting new equipment just as I was leaving for my next school and assignment. Then abruptly, the Army decided to relocate the unit from Fort Hood to Fort Sill. A year after standing up the unit at Fort Sill, it was inactivated (I hope permanently).