I believe there is documentation online that proves Bush was AWOL. His unit may never have seen combat, but he was called up. They do no such thing. It's not unusual for reservists/guardmen to change their active duty (For training!) dates after orders are submitted. They do have to be changed, but just because the site doesn't show the new orders, doesn't mean that there weren't any. In fact there have to have been, because the points record that the site does show indicates that Bush served several periods of active duty training around that time. In fact it shows he only missed the first 3 day period, 22-24 May, he has points for the other two 3 day periods indicated on the orders. The points accounting docment shows more active duty on July 2,3, and 5, an obvious make up for the 22-24 May dates, plus 9-12, 23-27 and 30 July active duty time. Additionally it shows Inactive duty training ('drill') for 23-24 June, 16-19 and 21-22 July, or 10 days worth (20 drills/points) You can't get the active duty point credit unless you submit both a copy of the orders putting you on active duty and signed documentation showing that you were present for that duty. The inactive duty training is handled by a single form, (Fm. 40, IIRC) with one place for advance approval, and a second attesting that the member was present for training. Now it's not unheard of for those "advance" approvals to be done at the same time as the other part, but they still have to be done by the appropriate unit personell. Units can handle their standard "drill weekends" by a single roster type document, which serves the same function as the individual member form. (All this is from memory and my memory of my ANG time is getting a little foggy, but the ANG and AF Reserve have pretty much the same procedures, because the requirements are federal and the accounting done by the Air Reserve Pesonnel Center. These days they may use the internet, probably do, as I'm always coming accross various reserve uint sites that have links to forms, such as orders requests, that I can't get to)
Thanks for the long, thoughtful posts, particularly the insight from your own National Guard experience. Comparing all these stories and documents gives me a headache.
For others, the documents in questions are
here, a better organized and far less over-the-top site than the one I linked earlier, awolbush.com. The documents are compiled
here.
The "penalty for bad attendance" document is clearly some part of Bush's initial enlistment before he attended basic training and before he was commissioned as a 2nd Lt, not some record of punishment or even "warning" other than one given to all ANG (and reserve) enlistees.
You definitely called
that one, it is misrepresented on the site, though the guy refers to it in a later article as part of a “signed statement.”
It's not unusual for reservists/guardsmen to change their active duty (For training!) dates after orders are submitted. They do have to be changed, but just because the site doesn't show the new orders, doesn't mean that there weren't any. In fact there have to have been, because the points record that the site does show indicates that Bush served several periods of active duty training around that time. In fact it shows he only missed the first 3 day period, 22-24 May, he has points for the other two 3 day periods indicated on the orders.
Here you lose me. These dates are all after April 1973, which comes after the period where Bush is nowhere to be found – May 1972 until then. The last article written by the guy who requested the info is
here. It makes the most sense to me, up until the point where he claims that “nothing indicates in the records that he ever made up the time he missed.” You appear to have successfully refuted that claim. The final claim is that the ARPC in Denver did Bush a favor and “tacked an extra six months on to Bush's commitment” – on paper, that is.
If Bush didn’t desert or go AWOL, doesn’t this documentation still demonstrate special treatment? Supposedly Bush’s unit’s “ranks included John Conally's son, Lloyd Bentson's son, John Tower's son, SEVEN Dallas Cowboys, and two sons of the businessman who got G W Bush into the Guard ahead of hundreds of others on a waiting list.”
