Piecing Together Bush's Final Two Years of Guard Duty

"The importance of showing up and doing the job."

George W. Bush, when asked what he learned during his time in the Texas Air National Guard

There's a large controversy over George Bush's last two years of service, and the Bush campaign offered a lot of explaining and one piece of paper to account for the most egregious lapse of service records: his 1972-73 year. But while the 1972-73 and 73-74 Statements for Points Earned do show that Bush racked up the points necessary for his honorable discharge, they also expose the haphazard way that Bush did so. In fact, they reveal the exact blunt truth of how Bush described his chief lesson from the TANG.

There are two copies of 1st Lt. George Bush's SPE for the years 1972-73, the main year in question concerning Bush's military service. Both copies exhibit the same damage, but the one used by George Magazine in their exoneration of Bush's record has some handwriting explaining the page that doesn't appear on the one found at AWOLBush.com. Here's links to both:

The unaltered SPE

George Magazine's altered but more legible SPE

For an example of a complete Statement of Points Earned, check out Bush's 1973-74 record. Here's a reprint of that information. It will come in handy later on:

73 MAY 29 73 MAY 31 1 003
73 JUN 05 73 JUN 07 1 003
73 JUN 23 73 JUN 24 2 004
73 JUL 02 73 JUL 03 1 002
73 JUL 05 73 JUL 05 1 001
73 JUL 09 73 JUL 12 1 004
73 JUL 16 73 JUL 19 2 008
73 JUL 21 73 JUL 22 2 004
73 JUL 23 73 JUL 27 1 006
73 JUL 30 73 JUL 30 1 001

The next to last column is important. This tells us what type of duty (TD) is generating the points. From this website, you can see that TD 1 is active duty, and TD 2 is a special tour, whatever that means. The handwriting on George Magazine's copy of the 72-73 SPE indicates that the 2 is inactive duty, while the 1 is active duty. I don't know what inactive duty entails. I'll leave that to someone more knowledgeable.

Regardless of which copy of the 72-73 SPE you're looking at, only the following information can be read:

     TD PTS

1 . 29 2 004
2 . 14 2 008
3 N 06 2 006
4 N 10 2 006
5 ? 08 2 004
6 . 03 1 003
7 . 10 1 003
8 . 20 2 004
9 . 24 1 003

I've added the 1-9 numbers on the left side for convienence. Also, in line 1, the dot that is holding the place for the last letter of the month is barely legible. Only the upper right corner can be seen, and it's a diagonal line heading up from left to right. The line is just visible along the tear, and the edge of a serif is plainly seen. What month could it have been?

Bush was serving on a May to May year, so let's list the months in that order:

MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY

The N's are quite visible, and can't be the month of June, because there's at least two month above the N month (the 29 month, the 14 month, and then the N month starting with 6). Therefore, the identifiable N month can only be JAN. Since the Bush campaign definitely claimed that Bush was serving on Nov. 29, the first month is NOV, not MAY, and the month in between is DEC.

Lt. Bush was ordered to attend active duty on May 22-24, 1973. This information fits into line 9, and would be his final entry for the year. (The other two dates of ordered active service are May 29-31 and Jun 5-7, 1973. They appear on lines one and two of the 73-74 SPE above).

Let's amend the 72-73 SPE with this information. The printed information is underlined, and all new dates are figured on a 2 inactive points per inactive day served, as per the 73-74 SPE. Any information not known at the present time is represented with a ? for a placeholder:

1 72 NOV 28 - 72 NOV 29 2 004 (Tue after T'giving - Wed)
2 72 DEC 10 - 72 DEC 14 2 008 (Mon - Thu)
3 73 JAN 04 - 73 JAN 06 2 006 (Thu - Sat)
4 73 JAN 08 - 73 JAN 10 2 006 (Mon - Wed)
5 73 ??? 07 - 73 ??? 08 2 004
6 73 ??? 01 - 73 ??? 03 1 003
7 73 ??? 08 - 73 ??? 10 1 003
8 73 ??? 19 - 73 ??? 20 2 004
9 73 MAY 22 - 73 MAY 24 1 003

With so much information in place, I'm going to give you my best guess for the rest of the story:

1 72 NOV 28 - 72 NOV 29 2 004 (Tue after T'giving - Wed)
2 72 DEC 10 - 72 DEC 14 2 008 (Mon - Thu)
3 73 JAN 04 - 73 JAN 06 2 006 (Thu - Sat)
4 73 JAN 08 - 73 JAN 10 2 006 (Mon - Wed)
5 73 FEB 07 - 73 FEB 08 2 004 (Wed - Thu)
6 73 MAY 01 - 73 MAY 03 1 003 (Tue - Thu)
7 73 MAY 08 - 73 MAY 10 1 003 (Tue - Thu)
8 73 MAY 19 - 73 MAY 20 2 004 (Sat - Sun)
9 73 MAY 22 - 73 MAY 24 1 003 (Tue - Thu)

By this reckoning:

Just as the George Magazine article states, Bush had enough retirement points to maintain his Guardsman status honorably, just like he accumulated enough electoral votes to become President.

But from 26 May 72 until 28 Nov 72, Bush blew off his Guard duty to work in Winston Blount's failed Senatorial campaign. He applied for one transfer to an Kansas unit and moved before the transfer was approved (it wasn't). In September, Bush applied again for an Alabama unit and was ordered to report for duty in October. He didn't.

He also blew off his piloting license. He missed his physical, because of his own admission that he no longer "intended" to fly, this despite the years of training at government expense. Do Guardsmen get to decide unilaterally what they will and will not do in the Guard? Bush was allowed this sovereignty.

But not forever. By my reading of his record, Bush got some form of talking-to in November. He showed up for some makeup days somewhere. But all was not well in Lt. Bush's life. That Christmas, he took an underage Marvin out drinking and challenged his dad to settle their differences "mano a mano." When he sobered up from that one, he got back into a routine of attendance, getting the points he needed for the quarter.

But when Bush wandered away from regular attendance again, somebody lit a fire under his posterior. On 73 April 23, Bush was ordered to attend ACDUTRA beginning 73 May 22. He also crunched six more days of active duty into the month of 73 May, with four more inactive duty points for good measure. Further, from his 73-74 SPE, you can see George putting PAID to his Guard service. Late May, June and July are a flurry of active duty points. Finally, the last point was on record, and the last hour was served. Bush had in two months accumulated enough points to apply for an early release to attend Harvard Business School. He got it.

But he didn't even come back to sign the paper for his transfer to a non-attendance-required Denver Guard unit. The Guard tacked on an extra six months as a final door prize for Bush. But it was probably unnoticed. By that time, Lt. Bush was at Harvard, applying the lesson he'd learned at the Texas Air National Guard.



Showing up and doing the job.

UPDATE: An unaltered, unripped version of the 72-73 SPE is now available on the web. You can go to my post on this new information by clicking here.