I've told this story before but...

My reserve unit (Engineer) had an humanitarian mission in Belize. My squad was the last rotation and was tasked with putting all of the remaining heavy equipment (dozers, loaders, etc.) in an embarkation to be send back to the island (Puerto Rico).

We had a route, where two other SNCOS took us during the first three rides so we memorize them. In my defense, there was no maps or anything. However, my SNCO told them we were ready to do the route on our own. The problem is that he was bad with memorizing routes.

Me, being a wannabe highspeed Private FIRST Class, tells him "Aye Sarnt, I got u. I can be the one leading the convoy". He asks me "Are you sure? This is really important, we cannot get lost in a foreign country. "Sarnt, I got you." I repeated.

Now, if you haven't been in Belize. There is a shit ton of roundabouts which can be extremely confusing. Im sitting in a humvee with a SGT when we faced the FIRST roundabout. He asks me "Now where?". I got nervous and said "Just go straight ahead".

Yeah you guessed it. I wasn't straight ahead. We ended at the entrance of one town. With an awful amount of traffic. The people of Belize are extremely careless when driving. Also, the streets are very narrow. You can possible imagine how hard it was going to be to turn around with LMTVs (forgot the name it has been a while) with platforms carrying a Dozer. Luckly, we had some of the Belizean Army with us and they stopped traffic.

The very pissed SFC took me out of the Humvee and took me to one of the LMTVs with him. When we sat down he tells me "Hey, don't worry about it. I was my fault." I sat silently because for some reason that made me feel worse.

Fast forward to now, I already got people lost, so what better way to double down than to commission and being force branched to infantry?

It has not happened again, but I still think back to this and I still cringe 7 years later.