GWB and the Air Guard

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Letters to the Editor
Published February 11, 2004

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

'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 and squadron commanders (Maj. William Harris
and 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, and 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 President Johnson and Secretary of Defense 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, and the airplane it possessed, the F-102, was air defense. It was
focused on defending the continental United States 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 1972 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 2½ 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) would be spending 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 Vietnam, you know), 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 a lot 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 -- 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: The clinic is closed that month for special training; the
individual is out of town on civilian business; etc.
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. Any
discipline, if required, is handled within the local squadron, group or
wing, administratively or judicially. 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 United States 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 most of America was sleeping and 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 Mexico. 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 --
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.5