The Vietnam-era National Guard, in which President Bush served from 1968 to 1973, was to some degree a loosely run outfit in which absences were tolerated, but it was hardly an anything-goes operation, according to officials and veterans.
“The policy at the time was `commander’s discretion,'” said National Guard Bureau spokesman Reggie Saville, referring to absences and early departures. “Practices varied from unit to unit, but it was not unusual for someone [like Bush] to be let out early.”
Fewer than 20,000 Guard members were called up for duty in Vietnam during the 10 years of the war, and the Guard was known as a haven for those who wished to avoid service in the war zone. Numerous Guard units now have been deployed for service in Iraq.
Democrats have recently criticized Bush’s service record in the Texas Air National Guard, focusing especially on a six-month period in 1972 when Bush was reassigned to an Alabama unit. There are no records that he regularly reported for duty.
Conner Warren, a 60-year-old retired executive, was in the Alabama Air National Guard’s 187th Tactical Recon Group at the same time Bush was assigned to the unit. He doesn’t remember the president but says that’s not surprising: Of the hundreds of people in the unit at the time, he was closest to 30 fellow pilots.
He said the unit’s commanders were flexible when it came to drills, knowing that the Guardsmen had outside commitments.
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“They were trying to deal with people who had full-time jobs, and sometimes the job would conflict with a drill weekend, so you could make it up later,” Warren said.
He said the unit was agreeable to early releases from service if it had enough Guardsmen to be considered combat ready, and it would not have been unusual for Bush to get one.
Bill Voigt, a member of an Alabama Air National Guard unit based at the Birmingham International Airport during the Vietnam War, recalled that his commanders accommodated absences–to a point.
“They would work with us, but they wouldn’t take anything from us,” he said. “If we weren’t going to be part of the unit, they would ask us to go elsewhere or get out. There were lots of people trying to get into the Guard.”
A hard line in Texas
Commanders took a similarly hard line in Texas. “You didn’t miss,” said Liberty County Judge C.T. Hight, who served as an Air National Guardsman at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas while Bush was stationed there.
A self-described “yellow-dog Democrat,” Hight said he never met Bush at Ellington during the time they were both assigned there.
According to National Guard Bureau spokesman Saville, missed drill time was supposed to be made up later. But he said even that requirement was sometimes waived under special circumstances.
Guard members were required to take part in one weekend drill a month and a two-week session in the summer, usually at a military camp.
Retired Illinois Air National Guard member Milton Nichols said some units allowed members to miss a monthly drill and others sometimes permitted absences of six months. Almost everyone in his unit was absent at one time or another, he added.
“If you had a personal problem at home or with your business, provided it wouldn’t affect your duty, you could make it up with prior approval,” said Nichols, who served with an engineering squadron in the early 1970s.
Although Bush’s military record attracted relatively little attention in the 2000 election, Democrats have seized on it, with some suggesting Bush was a shirker who avoided service in Vietnam by enlisting in the National Guard, then skipped required meetings, failed to get a required flight physical and left early for Harvard Business School.
Democrats also say Bush jumped to the top of a waiting list of 500 other applicants seeking admission to the Guard at a time when his father was a Texas congressman.
In contrast, Democrats have cited the record of Sen. John Kerry, the front-runner for the party’s nomination. He volunteered for Vietnam, commanded Navy Swift boats in combat, was wounded and received Silver and Bronze stars for valor.
More Bush files released
The White House late Friday released what it said was Bush’s entire personal military file, but the papers contained little new information.
Bush insists no favoritism was involved in his quick admission to the Guard, saying he joined to become a pilot rather than a draftee infantryman and he would have been happy to serve in Vietnam if called on to do so.
Steve Eckert, who served in the Illinois National Guard in the Vietnam era, noted that Bush’s unit could have been ordered to serve in the war. “He could have been called up just like we were called up,” he said.
Unlike the National Guard of today–which, along with the Reserves, will shortly comprise 40 percent of U.S. forces in Iraq–Vietnam-era Guard members made a proportionately smaller contribution to the war.
About 9 million men and women served in the U.S. military during the years of the Vietnam conflict.
According to Saville of the National Guard Bureau, which commands the Army and Air national guards, slightly fewer than 20,000 Guard members were deployed to Vietnam.
More than 58,000 American servicemen and women lost their lives in Vietnam; the death toll among National Guard members was 101.
President Lyndon Johnson chose not to send more Guard and Reserve fighters to Vietnam in part because American cities were being torn by racial and war protests in the late 1960s, and it often fell to the National Guard to deal with this civil strife.
In addition to absences, the “commander’s discretion” policy also applied to temporary transfers to other duty stations, such as Bush’s request that he be reassigned to a unit in Alabama in 1972 so he could work in a political campaign, Saville said.
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It was not unusual for Guard members in the early 1970s to be allowed out of the service early. Saville, emphasizing that he was speculating, said there are several reasons a pilot like Bush may have been granted early departure.
“They were winding down the war and the draft,” Saville said. “There was going to be a big draw-down in the size of the U.S. military. Bush was qualified for F-102s, which were considered obsolete aircraft and were about to be replaced.”