Robert W Bush returns to explain his Air national guard record.

This is the story of a young man who wanted to fly warplanes as his father had. He knew he wouldn't qualify as a pilot in the Air Force so he joined the Texas air national guard. There he worked hard and after 4 of his 6 years he had clocked 200 hours of flight trainin. He volunteered to serve in Vietnam but was turned down. (note the not very sympatheitic source for this fact).

To be qualified for combat he needed 500 hours of flight training. That would take 10 years at the rate he was allowed to go in the ANG. He realised he should have checked the regulations. He also realised that, given the low risk of a Mexican invasion, he was wasting his time and public money.

He decided to work for the Alabama Senate campaign of the postmaster general and asked for a transfer approved by his current and future commanding officers. When he was in Alabama he learned that some bureaucrat in Washington had disapproved his transfer so he asked to go to another base in Alabama.

In the end the mess took so long to clarify that he only served one weekend in Alabama.

Then he found out that, since he hadn't found a flight surgeon that weekend he was grounded, which given the low risk of a new round of the civil war didn't make much difference.

He returned to Texas quietly (very very quietly) working a desk job. Then he asked to be transferred to the ORS (which means he could have been shipped out to Vietnam and had to remain signed up for 6 extra months) so He could go to Harvard BS