Bush's service record

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'Bush and I were lieutenants'
George Bush and I were lieutenants and pilots in the 111th
Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), Texas Air
National Guard (ANG) from 1970 to 1971. We had the same flight
squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris
& Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, both now deceased). While we were not
part of the same social circle outside the base,
we were in the same fraternity of fighter pilots, & proudly wore
the same squadron patch.
It is quite frustrating to hear the daily cacophony from the
left and Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat,
et al., about Lt. Bush escaping his military responsibilities by
hiding in the Texas ANG. In the Air Guard during
the Vietnam War, you were always subject to call-up, as many Air
National Guardsmen are finding out today. If
the 111th FIS and Lt. Bush did not go to Vietnam, blame Pres.
Johnson and Secretary of Def. Robert S.
McNamara, not lowly Lt. Bush. They deliberately avoided use of
the Guard and Reserves for domestic political
calculations, knowing that a draftee only stirred up the concerns
of one family, while a call-up got a whole community's attention.
The mission of the 147th Fighter Group and its subordinate
111th FIS, Texas ANG, & the airplane it
possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was focused on defending the continental US from Soviet
nuclear bombers. The F-102 could not drop bombs and would have been useless in Vietnam. A pilot program
using ANG volunteer pilots in F-102s (called Palace Alert) was
scrapped quickly after the airplane proved to be
unsuitable to the war effort. Ironically, Lt. Bush did inquire
about this program but was advised by an ANG
supervisor (Maj. Maurice Udell, retired) that he did not have the
desired experience (500 hours) at the time and
that the program was winding down and not accepting more
volunteers.
If you check the 111th FIS records of 1970-72 and any other ANG
squadron, you will find other pilots excused
for career obligations and conflicts. The Bush excusal in 72' was
further facilitated by a change in the unit's
mission, from an operational fighter squadron to a training
squadron with a new airplane, the F-101, which required
that more pilots be available for full-time instructor duty rather
than part-time traditional reservists with outside
employment.
The winding down of the Vietnam War in 1971 provided a flood of
exiting active-duty pilots for these instructor
jobs, making part-timers like Lt. Bush and me somewhat superfluous.
There was a huge glut of pilots in the Air
Force in 1972, and with no cockpits available to put them in,
many were shoved into nonflying desk jobs. Any
pilot could have left the Air Force or the Air Guard with ease
after 1972 before his commitment was up because
there just wasn't room for all of them anymore.
Sadly, few of today's partisan pundits know anything about the
environment of service in the Reserves in the
1970s. The image of a reservist at that time is of one who joined,
went off for six months' basic training, then
came back and drilled weekly or monthly at home, with two weeks of
"summer camp." With the knowledge that
Mr. Johnson and Mr. McNamara were not going to call out the
Reserves, it did become a place of refuge for many
wanting to avoid Vietnam.
There was one big exception to this abusive use of the Guard to
avoid the draft, and that was for those who
wanted to fly, as pilots or crew members. Because of the training
required, signing up for this duty meant up to
2 years of active duty for training alone, plus a high
probability of mobilization. A fighter-pilot candidate
selected by the Guard (such as Lt. Bush and me) could spend
the next two years on active duty going
through basic training (six weeks), flight training (one year),
survival training (two weeks) and combat crew training
for his aircraft (six to nine months), followed by local checkout
(up to three more months) before he was even
deemed combat-ready. Because the draft was just two years, you sure
weren't getting out of duty being an Air
Guard pilot. If the unit to which you were going back was an F-100 you were mobilized for Vietnam. Avoiding
service? Yeah, tell that to those guys.
The Bush critics do not comprehend the dangers of fighter
aviation at any time or place, in Vietnam or at home,
when they say other such pilots were risking their lives or even
dying while Lt. Bush was in Texas. Our Texas
ANG unit lost several planes right there in Houston during Lt.
Bush's tenure, with fatalities. Just strapping on one
of those obsolescing F-102s was risking one's life.
Critics such as Mr. Kerry (who served in Nam),
Terry McAuliffe and Michael Moore (neither of
whom served anywhere) say Lt. Bush abandoned his assignment
as a jet fighter pilot without explanation or
authorization and was AWOL from the Alabama Air Guard.
Well, as for abandoning his assignment, this is untrue. Lt.
Bush was excused for a period to take employment
in Florida for a congressman and later in Alabama for a Senate
campaign.
Excusals for employment were common then and are now in the
Air Guard, as pilots frequently are in career
transitions, and most commanders (as I later was) are flexible in
letting their charges take care of career affairs
until they return or transfer to another unit near their new
employment. Sometimes they will transfer temporarily to
another unit to keep them on the active list until they can return
home. The receiving unit often has little use for a
transitory member, especially in a high-skills category like a
pilot, because those slots usually are filled and, if
not filled, would require extensive conversion training of up to
six months, an unlikely option for a temporary hire.
As a commander, I would put such "visitors" in some minor
administrative post until they went back home.
There even were a few instances when I was unaware that they
were on my roster because the paperwork often
lagged. Today, I can't even recall their names. If a Lt. Bush came
into my unit to "pull drills" for a couple of
months, I wouldn't be too involved with him because I would
have alot more important things on my table keeping
the unit combat ready.
Another frequent charge is that, as a member of the Texas ANG,
Lt. Bush twice ignored or disobeyed lawful
orders, first by refusing to report for a required physical in the
year when drug testing first became part of the
exam, and second by failing to report for duty at the disciplinary
unit in Colorado to which he had been ordered.
Well, here are the facts:
First, there is no instance of Lt. Bush disobeying lawful
orders in reporting for a physical, as none would be
given. Pilots are scheduled for their annual flight physicals in
their birth month during that month's weekend drill
assembly ?EUR" the only time the clinic is open. In the Reserves,
it is not uncommon to miss this deadline by a
month or so for a variety of reasons.
If so, the pilot is grounded temporarily until he completes the
physical. Also, the formal drug testing program
was not instituted by the Air Force until the 1980s and is done
randomly by lot, not as a special part of a flight
physical, when one easily could abstain from drug use because of
its date certain. Blood work is done, but to
ensure a healthy pilot, not confront a drug user.
Second, there was no such thing as a "disciplinary unit in
Colorado" to which Lt. Bush had been ordered. The
Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver is a repository of the
paperwork for those no longer assigned to a specific
unit, such as retirees and transferees. Mine is there now, so I
guess I'm "being disciplined." These "disciplinary
units" just don't exist. Had there been such an infraction
or court-martial action, there would be a record
and a reflection in Lt. Bush's performance review and personnel
folder. None exists, as was confirmed in The
Washington Post in 2000.
Finally, the Kerrys, Moores and McAuliffes are casting a
terrible slander on those who served in the Guard,
then and now. My Guard career parallels Lt. Bush's, except that I
stayed on for 33 years. As a guardsman, I even
got to serve in two campaigns. In the Cold War, the air defense
of the US was borne primarily by the
Air National Guard, by such people as Lt. Bush and me and a lot of
others. Six of those with whom I served in
those years never made their 30th birthdays because they died in
crashes flying air-defense missions.
While Mr. Kerry was playing antiwar games with Hanoi Jane Fonda, we were answering 3 a.m. scrambles for who knows what inbound threat over the Canadian subarctic, the cold North
Atlantic and the shark-filled Gulf of Mex. We were the
pathfinders in showing that the Guard and Reserves
could become reliable members of the first team in the total force,
so proudly evidenced today in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It didn't happen by accident. It happened because back at the
nadir of Guard fortunes in the early '70s, a lot of
volunteer guardsman showed they were ready and able to accept the responsibilities of soldier and citizen ?EUR"
then and now. Lt. Bush was a kid whose congressman father
encouraged him to serve in the Air National Guard.
We served proudly in the Guard. Would that Mr. Kerry encourage his children and the children of his colleague
senators and congressmen to serve now in the Guard.
In the fighter-pilot world, we have a phrase we use when things
are starting to get out of hand and it's time to
stop and reset before disaster strikes. We say, "Knock it off." So,
Mr. Kerry and your friends who want to slander
the Guard: Knock it off.

COL. WILLIAM CAMPENNI (retired)
U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard
Herndon, Va