You want a damning document? Here's a damning document!

[BurtWorm]

Bush was originally denied a request to ship out of his TX ANG post because "an obligated Reservist can be assigned to a Ready Reserve position only." Doesn't that mean "ready to be called up for active duty position only?"

[mr_hat]

1. Could typewriters of the time make big black smudges like that?

[Toucano]

2. LOL!

It must be some sort of primitive strike through font. Let's check the old ads again.

[BurtWorm]

3. Those smudges were invented in 1931.

You can get a Selectric ball with that smudge on E-bay if you act fast!

[PassingFair]

4. BUT, will that E-Bay transaction be included

in fiscal reports?

[goodhue]

8. Such smudges go back much farther than that!

:D

[Philostopher]

5. What 'Ready Reserve' meant, back in the '80s,

was that you'd fulfilled your primary military obligation, but in a time of active conflict, you could be called up to serve. Back then, you could sign up for a four or six-year hitch in the AF, but you served six years -- either six active duty years, or four active and two 'ready reserve' years.

My ex's obligation was up less than a year before Gulf War I. I remember he was out of town when they went into Kuwait, and him saying, 'good God, I'm glad I'm home free!' I don't think they called up any ready reserves for GWI, though. If they had, anybody who was still sitting out the remainder of a six-year hitch could have been called up.

Now, what 'ready reserve' meant when we were actually involved in a conflict, I don't know -- presumably, it meant 'get your ass over to the Mekong.'

[BurtWorm]

6. Thank you!

That's what I thought it meant. Of course, since Bush was grounded, what use would he have been in Vietnam? Would he have been put on the ground? :shrug: Note that the date of this memo is May 1972, when Bush was scheduled to have his required medical exam and didn't make it. I think all the shit that hit the fan hit it right about when this memo was written. I think Bush skipped town without waiting for an answer, then his father's men cleaned up after him.

[Philostopher]

7. Yeah, he was Air National Guard.

Had he been enlisted, what he probably would have ended up doing was the 'grunt' job in the Air Force -- fuel systems maintenance. That was the bottom level job available in the AF back in the early '80s, if I remember correctly, other than pushing papers. Even for that, you had to be able to type -- all you had to be able to do, to be a 'fuelie,' was pass the equivalent of a drunk test while sober.

I know because a friend of ours when my first hubby was in tech school washed out of the training for the job he was doing (it was the third most involved tech school in the AF at the time, after defense languages and cryptology), and they dumped him in fuel systems. There also were the crappy jobs they offered my ex for his re-enlistment, since he was in a field that was being civilianized (he was flight simulator technician, which was sold off to the manufacturers) -- radio dispatcher and pavement maintenance.

That was for enlisted guys, though -- not sure what the 'shit list' was for low-level officers. Probably not much better, because the expectations are so much higher of commissioned officers than of enlisted guys who haven't made NCO yet.