It's just poor all round......
I was leaving Akrotiri on posting with my wife and 7 week old child. I had already spoken to customs re my child's lack of passport and they put the necessary procedures in place for us to leave.
On the day of departure the movers proudly announced to my wife and myself that we could fly but our child would have to stay, despite us producing the docs that the customs people had given us. When we were a little upset with this decision we asked to speak to the customs people to be told that the office was closed but would reopen at 1230. The flight was about 30 min later. Deciding that time was off the essence here we went straight to customs to find anyone to find out what was going on - when we got there we found out that the customs office was open and that they would have been shut at 1230 and that the movers knew the times well.
Once we had got my child onto the aircraft( a fairly stressful time) we sat in out VC10 with rearfacing seats and strapped my child's european standard car crash seat into the chair(very secure the helo loadies would have been proud) I was told that he couldn't occupy the seat for t/o or ldg as it was authorised. Fair enough I said - I know the drill been aircrew for a while, I asked for the additional lapstrap so that I could secure my son to myself. At this point I was told that I couldn't do that as they didn't have any lapstraps. When pressed as to what the VC10 crew felt was a suitable method of restraint for a 7 week old child I was asked "can you hang on to him?" by the Steward. At this point I was getting a little frustrated and pointed out that I needed to secure a bag in case it flew round the cabin but apparently I can hang onto a child. At this point I asked to speak to the organ grinder not the monkey and the FS loadie came over and said exactly the same thing. My only options were to hang onto my child or get off the plane. Having fought hard to get onto the plane and with my next job pressing(if I missed the flt it would have been tricky) I foolishly elected to stay on board. I should have got the Captain down to speak to him and then got off the plane if I got no satisfaction. I did complain to the PRO and got a written response about 3 months later(the speed of military paperwork is astounding).
Frankly the military AT fleets should do what it's best at - flying into sh1tholes and pulling out the stops for the boys on the ground and leave flying families etc to the civvies. Appalled at the Movers, AT Fleet and myself(for not having enough courage to do what I should have done - get off) is not the word.