During the Vietnam period, the rules were often relaxed, with commanders giving plenty of leeway for guardsmen to juggle their military duty around civilian lives.
It was into this world that Bush came in the summer of 1968. His military records show that, with long waiting lists for many Guard units around the country, he jumped into the Air Guard and the officer ranks without the exceptional credentials and ROTC training that other officer candidates often possessed. He was also given a highly coveted pilot's slot.
Bush's application, as well as his commission, were handled by then-Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, who said, "Nobody did anything for him.... There was no ... influence on his behalf. Neither his daddy nor anybody else got him into the Guard." Staudt, who retired in 1972 as a brigadier general, said Bush was enrolled quickly because there was a demand for pilot candidates.
But Tom Hail, a historian for the Texas Air National Guard, said that records did not show a pilot shortage in the Guard squadron at the time. Hail, who reviewed the unit's personnel records for a special Guard museum display on Gov. Bush's service, said Bush's unit had 27 pilots at the time he began applying.
While that number was two short of its authorized strength, the unit had two other pilots who were in training and another awaiting a transfer into the unit. There was no apparent need to fast-track applicants, he said.
As for a direct commission for someone of Bush's limited qualifications, Hail said, "I've never heard of that. Generally they did that for doctors only, mostly because we needed extra flight surgeons."
Bush did a year of flight school training in Georgia, and at his graduation his father gave the commencement address. The new pilot moved back to Houston, performing routine flight maneuvers over the Gulf of Mexico.
The Guard program Bush entered required a summer of basic training, a year of flight school, then a prescribed schedule of weekend duty and summer duty, stretching over six years in all.
During his time in the Guard, Bush was not called up for Vietnam, for two reasons. Washington leaders did not want to engage Guard and reserve units for fear of negative political fallout once so-called "weekend warriors" began dying. And the plane he was trained on was being phased out of the regular Air Force and was not needed in Southeast Asia. Bush has maintained that he supported the war and would have served in Vietnam if his unit had been called up.
